Family
by Cordria
Summary: What really conspired in Danielle's short life to bring about Kindred Spirits? An introspective set of pieces about Danielle and Vlad's life together. Warnings for child abuse, angst, and emotional upheavals.
1. Introduction

**Family  
**A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria

* * *

_…this is the 100 drabble challenge of a connected variety that will go in an order that resembles chapters so this collection of singular one-shots will kind of look a lot like a full-fledged fiction… _

* * *

Drabble 1: Introduction

* * *

He pulled his silver hair back into a ponytail, deftly securing the long hair with a small clip. Today was the day that everything was going to change. Today, his long-worked-for dreams were going to come true.

Too excited to bother using the elevator, he phased straight through the floor and down into his underground lab. Screens blinked to life when his feet quietly tapped against the ground, computers hummed in the background, and the entire lab smelled of warm computers and cool ectoplasm. He took a deep breath, smelling everything, looking around with satisfaction.

"Perfect," he whispered.

"Did-did you say something, Cupcake?" a metallic female voice asked. A very expensive next-generation hologram shimmered into view. Although badly rendered and horribly two-dimensional, the man grinned with delight.

"Maddie! Is everything ready?" he asked the digitized woman.

The hologram tipped its head to the side and fizzled. "Y-yes."

His smile grew, his eyes dancing with happiness. Making his way across the immaculate lab, the man stopped before a bank of computer screens and studied the information. "We've got enough materials? Enough energy? Enough data?"

"I said-said-said everything was re-ready," the hologram answered with what might have been a smile.

He turned around to face four coffin-like tubes. Each was filled with a greenish fluid that bubbled slowly as it released its ambient energy into the air. The tubes were connected to impossibly complex banks of computers and monitors, blank at the moment but ready to jump into life and compute trillions of calculations a second. At the center of the four was one large, red button.

"This is what I've been waiting for… for _years_," he whispered as he stared down at the button. One press of the button and part of his dreams would come true. "Someone to call my own. It's not Maddie… or Daniel… but it's close."

"Shall I-I start the-the-the program?"

He nodded. "Remind me to fix that stutter of yours too."

"Relea-releasing protein mixture. Releasing deoxyribonucleic acid-acid-acid infused cells." The hologram floated a few feet closer. "Commence-mence energy saturation when you are read-ready, Sweetie."

His hand hovered over the button for a few minutes. Dreams of the perfect son flittered through his mind. With a smile unlike any that had graced his face in decades, he pushed the button and watched the four tubes glow and fizzle with energy.

For the first time in years, Vlad Masters was going to have a family.

* * *

_Family is not who you have or what they can do…  
__it's the love that grows despite everything that can come between you._


	2. Love

**Family  
**A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria

* * *

_…this is the 100 drabble challenge of a connected variety that will go in an order that resembles chapters so this collection of singular one-shots will kind of look a lot like a full-fledged fiction… _

* * *

Drabble 2: Love

* * *

Exactly 23 days, 7 hours, 11 minutes, and 54 seconds after Vlad Masters pushed a button to signal the beginning of four new lives, he was back down in the lab, gazing past his reflection on the goo-filled tube's surface. He had known now for nearly a week that all four of his children were flawed in some way. For hours, he had wondered whether or not to just terminate their existences and try again.

In the end, however, he had decided that they would be much more useful if he let them grow to full term. He could use four powerful minions for any number of things. If nothing else, he could at least have them torment the Dairy King into leaving him alone for a few days. There's only so much cheese that a person can take.

The first three all had physical deformities. One had almost no physical form to speak of… his cellular structure had degenerated just a few days into the cloning process and little was left but his spectral form. The second was plagued with hormone problems. He was already nearly three times the size he should be. The third hadn't been able to fully handle the onslaught of spectral energy, leaving him looking like little more than a grotesque skeleton. Adding to the troubles, the first two (which Vlad was already calling Sparks and Muscles in his mind) showed few signs of mental stimulation or cognitive growth.

He sighed, continuing to stare past his reflection towards his last, and greatest, mystery. This one… was a girl. She was his greatest achievement, growing on schedule, easily adapting to the increasing levels of spectral energy, her brain firing like it was supposed to. As to why she was a girl – even he wasn't entirely sure.

Maddie shimmered into view beside him. "The chil-children are ready to be re-re-removed from the cloning-ning tubes."

"Yes," Vlad said quietly. They needed to be removed rather quickly now. Waiting just a few minutes too long would result in their lungs activating while still in the tubes and they would drown. Despite this knowledge, he didn't move.

Did he really want deformed children? Should he even let them be brought into the world?

"S-sweetie?" the Maddie program asked as lights started to flash on the tubes. "The chil-children will not survive with-without being removed within the next-next-next three minutes."

"I know." Was it worth having a family if they wouldn't be perfect? His dreams felt like they had been ripped apart and cheapened. All he wanted was the perfect family… was that too much to ask for all he'd been through? Everything he'd done up to this point had been for _this_ – all the lying, cheating, stealing...

A family.

And he'd been robbed of it again. First his parents, then his foster parents, then Maddie and Jack, then Daniel, and now these four…

His eyes burned with tears as he stared at his reflection. He wanted a _family_, not some deformed thing that might have been a family. This was just one more loss, one more canyon in the road to his dreams.

"One-one more minute, cup-cupcake."

Finally, with just moments to spare, Vlad turned his arms intangible and thrust them through the hard outer shell and into the electrically charged goop. He winced as a tiny shock flickered over him, then his hands closed upon the small, warm body of his daughter.

Vlad picked up the child, quickly wiping off the cool ectoplasmic gelatin she had been growing in for the past three weeks. He'd expected her to start screaming like a normal infant when he got her mouth clear, but instead she just took a few deep breaths, relaxing in his arms.

The tiny baby girl opened her eyes, light blue sparkling with emerald. Her eyes fixed on the red eyes of her father and she cooed, snuggling into his cool cloak.

It was love at first sight for one of them anyways.

* * *

_Family is not who you have or what they can do…  
__it's the love that grows despite everything that can come between you._


	3. Light

**Family  
**A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria

* * *

_…this is the 100 drabble challenge of a connected variety that will go in an order that resembles chapters so this collection of singular one-shots will kind of look a lot like a full-fledged fiction… _

* * *

Drabble 3: Light

* * *

She giggled and laughed, her tiny fingers reaching up to play with the tiny mobile over her crib. The shimmering, shiny pictures on the mobile were all of ghosts smiling down at her while she played. It even played a soft little lullaby.

A sudden flicker of light caught her attention. She turned her head, wide blue eyes searching for the quick movement, her innocent laughter subsiding for a moment as she tried to puzzle out the mystery. There it was again, a small flash of green.

It came to rest on the edge of her crib; a glowing figure no bigger than the child's thumb sat on the rail and stared down at her. Danielle cooed happily, her eyes sparkling with happy emerald fires as she stared up at her youngest brother. Crawling over to the edge of the crib, she levered herself to her feet and reached out to grab the tiny, glowing boy.

He unsteadily flew out of her reach, settling back down on top of one of the pieces of the mobile, his supernatural glow reflecting in the mirror-like images. Danielle giggled, her eyes glowing as she reached for him again. The firefly-like boy danced out from between her fingers, flitting from perch to perch as she ungainly chased him around the small crib.

Their quiet, bubbling laughter echoed around the room as they played.

"Dan-Danielle?" The Maddie program came online, startling the two children. Danielle froze and stared up at the hologram in surprise while her tiny brother hid behind one of the mobile's pictures. "Are you hungry?"

The girl crawled over and held out her arms to the image of her mother, begging to be picked up. "Ma, ba, ma!" she babbled.

The static-filled hologram accessed a maternal subroutine and smiled down at the child, trying to calculate whether or not the child should be fed. Determining the girl could use some extra nutrition – she was growing at an exponential rate when compared to average humans – the Maddie program sent a notice towards Vlad's desk that the child was hungry. After which, the hologram tipped its head to the side and shut down, vanishing from sight, its job completed.

Danielle blinked in surprise as her mother disappeared. "Ba ma?" she wondered softly, clinging to the edge of the crib, her tiny brain struggling to figure out what had happened to the lady that should have picked her up.

A flicker of light caught her eye and Danielle twisted her head. Spark, her youngest brother, had dropped from the mobile into her crib and was curling up on her pillow to take a nap. Giggling, she let go and collapsed onto her blanket before crawling over and lying down next to her brother.

It didn't matter to her that Vlad didn't show up to feed her until hours later.

* * *

_Family is not who you have or what they can do…  
__it's the love that grows despite everything that can come between you._


	4. Dark

**Family  
**A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria

* * *

_…this is the 100 drabble challenge of a connected variety that will go in an order that resembles chapters so this collection of singular one-shots will kind of look a lot like a full-fledged fiction… _

* * *

Drabble 4: Dark

* * *

Vlad flipped off the light switch and stared at his children in the dark. He leaned against the doorframe and closed his eyes. In his mind, he saw four perfect children – obedient, smart, handsome… 

When he opened his eyes again, reality struck him hard… just like it always did. His quadruplets were damaged. Flawed. They weren't handsome in any way, shape, or form, at least two of them had severe mental handicaps, and not one of them listened to a word he said. He'd strived and worked and conned and connived for them.

And they weren't what he wanted.

He pushed himself away from the door and slipped into the shadows towards the four cribs. Maddie had been giving him regular updates on the children's growth and activities, just like he'd asked, and each of the children was progressing on schedule. All of three weeks old, and already some of them were standing and (in one case) flying.

"All because of that hormone," he whispered, resting his elbows on one of the cribs and staring down into the shadows. The tiny form was curled into a ball under the sheet, her breathing slow and steady. "One special ghost hormone."

RK9-12H. The children had been given enough of the hormone during the early stages of development to accelerate their growth a mind-boggling twelve-fold. For each day that passed, nearly two weeks of development took place in each of the four small bodies. Each week translated into nearly three months of growth. Each month, a year.

Perhaps the best part was the fact that RK9-12H was inhibited by testosterone and estrogen. Once the children hit puberty and started to naturally produce those human hormones, their exponential growth would slow to only two or three times a normal human's rate. Their lives would be short – maybe twenty or thirty years – but they could do anything during that time.

A smile was forming on his face as he watched the child sleep. He squashed it with a fierce scowl and a glare towards the moon. These were just minions. They had no place in his heart.

"I'll start over," he vowed, his eyes drifting from the quarter moon down to the sleeping child. "I'll have the perfect son." He reached down and tucked the blanket a little tighter around her shoulders. "This isn't the end of my dream. It's just a bump in the road." His fingers rested for a second on her side, feeling the gentle rise and fall of her body as she breathed.

He trailed around the room, stopping to gaze at each of the kids. Muscles was nearly the size of a three-year-old already even though his mind was that of an infant still. Spark, the quickest to fly, was just a tiny flare of light against the dark sheets. Bones had his head buried under his blanket.

Heading out of the room, he paused one last time at Danielle's crib. "You never cry," he breathed, "not when you're hurt or tired or hungry. I forget to feed you and you just sit there, waiting for me. Why?"

"Why do you always look at me the way you do? Blue eyes sparkling like diamonds and a knowing smile on your face. What is it you know that I don't? Why are you so happy? Don't you know how flawed you are?"

He tried to scowl even harder as he turned and stormed out of the room. His children were impossible to understand.

Even so, he shut the door quietly behind him.

* * *

_Family is not who you have or what they can do…  
__it's the love that grows despite everything that can come between you._


	5. Seeking Solace

_Ah well. I dunno how long I will go with this; it doesn't seem very popular. It'll get better once Danielle gets older and I can ramp up the angst... if I get that far._

* * *

**Family  
**A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria

* * *

_…this is the 100 drabble challenge of a connected variety that will go in an order that resembles chapters so this collection of singular one-shots will kind of look a lot like a full-fledged fiction…_

* * *

Drabble 5: Seeking Solace

* * *

Danielle giggled, picking up the blue teddy bear and hugging it tightly to her as her mother watched. "Dan-Danielle," the Maddie program stuttered, tipping its head to the side, "h-how are you do-doing tod-day?"

"Ma ma!" Danielle laughed, pushed herself to her feet, and walked unsteadily towards the hologram. "Teddy!" Danielle held the soft, small bear up for her mother's inspection. "Teddy, Teddy, Teddy!"

Algorithms deep in Vlad's castle whirred for a moment before the Maddie program smiled. "That's a p-p-pretty t-teddy bear, Danielle." The program finished its daily analyzing of the tiny hybrid's uncoordinated movements and began on her vocalizations. "S-say 'pretty teddy' p-p-please Da-Danielle."

"Peddy Teddy!" the girl cooed, snuggling the bear to her. "Mama hold peddy Teddy?"

"No thank-ank you, Danielle."

The small girl laughed and toddled away, no longer confused when the hologram suddenly vanished from view. After a whole of two months of life, she was well versed in the weird ways of her mother. In her mind – developed to the age of a two year old in many ways – it made complete sense for mothers to just disappear.

After all, she herself had figured out how to vanish from sight.

The ways of her younger brothers, however, weren't nearly as clear; they were constantly giving her growing mind new mysteries to figure out. On this particular day, as she wandered over to her box of toys Muscles clomped into the room, three huge fingers stuffed into his mouth. He was nearly four feet tall and powerfully strong, towering over his elder sister. He grinned at her, drool escaping from his mouth and dripping down his chin.

"Muh-l," Danielle said with a smile. She pulled open her pink toy box and took out her second-favorite toy: a red tiger plushie. "Ti-er. Play?"

When her brother didn't answer, Danielle didn't feel too badly. She had long since figured out that brothers don't talk, although she wasn't entirely sure why, and had decided that she was more than willing to do all the talking for all of them. So she simply held out the tiger plushie and said, "Play, Muh-l."

The bigger halfa shook his head, but took the tiger and held it in his clumsy, over-large hands anyways.

Danielle giggled. "Play!" She held up her own favorite blue teddy and zoomed it through the air like she'd seen her father move a few times. "Fly! Zooooom!" Twirling in an unsteady circle, the girl dipped and swirled the teddy around and around.

Muscles couldn't quite figure out what it was his sister was doing. All he really knew was that she was having fun and that he wanted to have fun too. He took an unsteady step forwards and reached out for the blue plushie that his sister had in her hands. When she twirled away from him, he felt a flare of anger and reacted like the two year old he was: he pushed her down.

Danielle rolled onto her stomach, her eyes wide at what her brother had done. She watched, quietly, as the taller boy picked up her favorite teddy bear and clomped away. Then she pushed herself to her feet and looked around. Her teddy was gone. "Teddy? Peddy Teddy?" she whimpered.

When the teddy bear didn't answer, Danielle was devastated. "Mama!" she cried, tears sparkling in her eyes and sobs sneaking out of her. She already knew that her calls wouldn't get a response; the Maddie program didn't activate on her command and certainly wouldn't appear just for a few tears. She was a whole of two months old and she was all on her own.

But then something new and different happened, and it threw Danielle for a loop: Vlad walked straight through the wall and stopped right in front of her.

She shut up instantly, staring up at her mysterious father and feeling a strange gush of love around her heart. Her father would fix everything. "What's wrong?" the oldest halfa asked sharply, staring down at her tear-filled eyes.

"Muh-l take teddy," Danielle told him, hiccupping a few times.

Narrowing his icy eyes, Vlad studied his daughter. "Why don't you go get it back?" he asked after a moment, finally thinking to crouch a little to be more on her level.

Danielle thought about that for a moment. Really, she didn't think it was her job to go get her toy back – someone should go rescue her Teddy for her and her father was a perfect person to go do it. "Teddy Dada?" she sniffled.

Vlad shifted uncomfortably as he watched more tears appear in his daughter's eyes, not sure what to do. It bothered him that a powerful businessman such as himself would be so unnerved by a few tears. "Okay, okay," he muttered finally, reaching down to pick up the young girl and carry her into the next room. "Let's get your bear back."

With a smile on her face, Danielle snuggled up to her father and waited to find out if she'd get her teddy back. One hand fisted into her father's shirt.

Actually, she didn't really care about the teddy bear anymore. The fact that her father was holding her was good enough for now.

* * *

_Family is not who you have or what they can do...  
it's the love that grows despite everything that can come between you._


	6. Break Away

**Family  
**A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria

* * *

_…this is the 100 drabble challenge of a connected variety that will go in an order that resembles chapters so this collection of singular one-shots will kind of look a lot like a full-fledged fiction…_

* * *

Drabble 6: Break Away

* * *

Danielle, ever the happy, bubbling child, toddled farther away from where her father was tapping on his laptop. It had been such a nice day that Vlad had carted his daughter outside with him and – although he didn't want to admit it – he spent more time watching his daughter than doing his work. For a reason he couldn't quite understand, every time she went where he couldn't see her, his heart seemed to freeze up.

He fixed a sneer on his face and stared pointedly at his laptop's screen. The girl could go where she wanted; she was flawed after all. Unstable, female… and much too happy. She wasn't the perfect son that he had dreamed and wished for. She should have been terminated before she was even born, really, so what did he care if she got hurt?

Even so, his eyes flickered up to check her position between emails and he had to physically bite his lip to keep from calling her back. The emotions that touched through him and gripped at his heart were too confusing. He backed away from them almost without thought.

Vlad Masters had never been loved – and he was determined to give his heart and soul to the one person who truly deserted it. Emotions such as love were too weak to be handed out to whoever came along. No deformed child was going to steal what he had been saving for his beloved Maddie.

As he reminded himself firmly about that promise, he watched Danielle out of the corner of his eye. She twirled around in circles, dancing and giggling as she tried to catch a small butterfly. Her small fingers grasped for the white bug and she laughed when the fragile insect continued to flutter just beyond her reach.

Between one clumsy jump and the next, Danielle felt something very strange tickle her mind. It kind of felt like when she went invisible, but not quite. This felt lighter and feathery and windy. She wrinkled her nose and stopped trying to catch the butterfly for a moment as the need to sneeze overcame her.

When she sneezed, her eyes squeezed shut and the feeling didn't go away. Actually, it grew. She could feel it tingle in her arms and legs and it made her whole body feel feathery. She didn't like it.

But, at the ripe old age of two months and eleven days, she quickly forgot the slight discomfort that came with the strange feeling. The butterfly was much more interesting. Her head twisted to follow the patch of white, fluttering wings. Spotting it, she jumped up to catch it…

And didn't come down.

Danielle glanced down at the ground, her eyes widening in surprise and terror as her body hovered about a foot over the grass. Turning her head sharply to find her father so that he could come rescue her, she managed to tip her whole body over. Unable to see Vlad and not knowing how to fix this problem she'd gotten herself into, she screamed.

Vlad, who had finally managed to get back to work, actually dropped his laptop when Danielle screamed. Every thought of not caring if she got hurt flew from his head like they had never existed as Vlad raced around the corner, searching for his daughter. He skidded to a stop, ready to turn into a ghost and fight whatever spirit was bothering the girl.

When he spotted her, however, he hesitated and watched her struggle for a moment, a small smile settling on his face as he realized what was going on. She was fully upside down by that point, kicking her legs and reaching desperately for the grass with her hands, never coming an inch closer to where she wanted to be. She was 'stuck' in the air.

Taking a few steps forwards, Vlad crouched on the ground so that his face was level with hers – if she'd turn around to see him. Then he chuckled, a weird warmth surrounding his heart as he watched her attempt to fly for the first time. Danielle, hearing her father's voice, tipped her head around so that she could see him – upside down – from her perch in midair.

When Vlad saw his daughter's eyes, peering at him in surprise and a little bit of fear, his chuckle grew to an actual laugh. Maddie had looked at him in exactly the same way – with exactly those same eyes – the first time they had met over twenty years previously. It felt strange to him, laughing; he hadn't truly laughed since his accident over twenty years previously. Wiping a tear from his eye, Vlad reached forward to right his floating daughter.

With a small yelp, Danielle clung to her father's hand after he set her upright. She felt infinitely better knowing he was there and, although his laughter made her think that there wasn't anything really wrong with what was happening, she still didn't want to be left alone. When she finally settled back down onto the ground, the feathery feeling vanishing from her body, she stuck close to her father as he went back to survey the damage to his laptop. She wasn't too sure about this 'flying' thing – it was a bit scarier than she figured it would be.

As for Vlad, he surprised himself by having a smile on his face for the rest of the day… and he wasn't really sure why.

* * *

_Family is not who you have or what they can do...  
it's the love that grows despite everything that can come between you._


	7. Heaven

**Family  
**A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria

* * *

_…this is the 100 drabble challenge of a connected variety that will go in an order that resembles chapters so this collection of singular one-shots will kind of look a lot like a full-fledged fiction…_

* * *

Drabble 7: Heaven

* * *

Vlad leaned over one of the flickering computer screens in his lab and gave the monitor a sharp tap. As the picture steadied, Vlad let a small smile cross his face. The numbers were there, the data was there – the only question was how to ensure the new clones' survival.

He had already chosen to cut down on the number of clones in process from four to three, giving each cloning tank an extra thirty-three percent more computing power. He was even in the process of hiring someone to create a complex algorithm to lessen the original amount of spectral energy flowing into the pods to hopefully forestall the dramatic cellular breakdown demonstrated in both Spark and Bones.

With still no idea why Danielle had turned out female, Vlad did the only thing he could think of to rectify that – he had ordered Skulker to only catch male ghosts to drain energy from. There was a slim possibility that Danielle had been exposed to female ghostly energy at a critical developmental state, thus turning her female. The girl's blood tests showed that she still had one 'X' and one 'Y' chromosome; for some reason she was male at the human genetic level, yet female in appearance.

"This is going to work this time," he vowed to himself, calling up an image of Daniel and Maddie on the screen. His fingers brushed over the pictures gently, lovingly resting on Maddie's figure. "I'm going to have my family. First, a son, then I'll steal you away from your prison."

"Dada?"

Vlad glanced down, blinking in surprise when he found Danielle toddling towards him. He was sure that he had closed the lab's door. How in the world could she have found him down here? "Maddie," he called out, activating the Maddie program.

"Y-yes Sugarpea?" the program stuttered as the static-filled hologram shimmered into view.

"How did Danielle get down here?"

The program froze for a moment as its computers worked on an answer. "It ap-appears she walked-ed-ed through the wall-wall, Dear. Intangibility."

"MAMA!" Danielle laughed, changing her path from her father towards the newly appeared hologram. The Maddie program smiled down at the child.

"Why is she down here?"

Again, the program hesitated. "Perhaps sh-she is hungry-gry."

Vlad nodded slowly. He wasn't sure when the last time he'd fed the four clones. Not for the first time, he cursed the fact that the children hadn't turned out more normal – if they had, he could've just hired a revolving set of nannies. He was already contemplating getting one anyways. Surely he could find someone willing to keep their mouth shut and work with the four misshapen children.

"I'm busy," he told Danielle. "I'll be up to feed you soon."

Danielle blinked at him, not quite understanding.

"Go upstairs. I'm working on your brother."

"Brudder?" She smiled, knowing that word, and took a few more steps closer. "I see?"

Vlad hesitated, but then nodded and scooped her up. He pointed to the computer screen where the picture of Maddie and Danny was still displayed. "See him? That's Danny. That's going to be your brother someday."

The young girl studied the picture as seriously as a two-year-old could, but she couldn't figure out how that picture was going to be her brother. So she just smiled a little bigger. Brothers were fun.

"And he'll be _right_," Vlad said, almost to himself, "not wrong like you and the other three."

Danielle looked up at her father, confused as to why he thought she how she was wrong, then snuggled a little closer in the hope that would make up for it. "Dada," she said softly.

"See her? That's your mother – your real mother, not some silly hologram. She's perfect and loving and gentle and kind. You should get to meet her some time." Vlad's voice dropped to a soft whisper as he unconsciously held the small child closer to him. "I still remember the first time I saw her. College initiation day. She was sitting up in a tree, trying to get a better view of the presenter. Something must have scared her – a bird or something – and she tipped over backwards."

He chuckled. "That's how we met. Her hanging upside down by her knees, me inches from running into her, staring at each other in surprise." A gentle smile was on his face, then he glanced down at Danielle. "You've got her eyes, you know. You remind me of her all the time."

Danielle didn't answer. She loved the feel of her father's warm, strong arm holding her close. Even the uncomfortable feeling of hunger in her stomach faded away when he held her like this. She let her eyes drift closed.

"Someday, Danielle. Someday it'll be me and Maddie and our perfect son, just like I always dreamed."

The little girl wondered for a moment where she fit into the dream, but she fell asleep before she could really decide. Being like this, warm and held and close, felt like heaven.

Vlad stared at the picture, his mind a million miles away. "It'll be like heaven."

* * *

_Family is not who you have or what they can do...  
it's the love that grows despite everything that can come between you._


	8. Innocence

**Family  
**A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria

* * *

_…this is the 100 drabble challenge of a connected variety that will go in an order that resembles chapters so this collection of singular one-shots will kind of look a lot like a full-fledged fiction…_

* * *

Drabble 8: Innocence

* * *

Danielle was hungry. Her father had vanished, as he did every now and then, and there was nobody around to feed her. By this point in her life – a whole of three months – she was quite used to being hungry. But that didn't mean she liked it. "Daddy?"

She poked her head around another door, studying the room with her blue teddy bear clutched into her hand. Her blue eyes narrowed a moment in frustration when she determined that the room was empty.

"Dan-Danielle," the Maddie program stuttered, sparkling into life. "What are you do-doing up here?"

"I hungry, Mommy," she whined. "Where Daddy?"

"Vlad is-is-is not currently home. I will-ill send him an-another message." The hologram smiled pleasantly. "Go-go back to your room-oom." The computer determined that it had solved the problem, sent the text message to Vlad's cell phone, then turned off without another word.

Stomach grumbling, Danielle stood still for a moment, hugging her plushie to her. "I hungry," she whimpered softly. She didn't, however, call out for her mother. She had already figured out that her strange mother wouldn't ever pick her up, feed her, or do anything but smile… and that wasn't what Danielle wanted at the moment. Food was what she wanted.

There wasn't going to be any food in her room and, since she knew that her mother couldn't do anything to stop her from going where she wanted, she wasn't going to just go hungry. She turned and headed down the hallway in the opposite direction from her room. When she found that the next door was locked, she simply walked through it. This new room – a large tiled space with high counters and silvery appliances – was just as empty as the rest of the castle.

Danielle scowled, angry at the lack of food and her inability to find something to eat. Her nearly three-year-old mind was busily churning away at the problem of how to locate some food. Normally her food was brought to her, set on a tray at her special table, and all she had to do was eat. The idea of searching for her supper was something new and mysterious and she had no idea where to even start. What if the food was running around and hiding from her? How would she ever find it?

Unable to see any food set out in the kitchen, she turned around and started to head out of the room. She paused when she saw movement; her brother Bones was crawling into the kitchen. Halfway through the door, the skull-like head looked up and his emerald eyes fixed on his sister.

"Bones," Danielle smiled, crouching down so that their faces were at the same level. "I hungry. You find food?"

Of the four clones, Danielle was definitely the smartest and quickest to learn, but Bones was a close second. Although he couldn't talk due to his lack of a voice box, he was more than aware of what she was saying. He set his jaw into something akin to a smile and nodded. Since Bones was ignored quite a bit more often than his more-human sister, he was used to finding his own food.

His favorite meal was easy to find – it was usually located in the fancy plastic jar on the tallest counter. Even better, he knew that his sister would love the forbidden treat.

Gesturing with his hand, Bones dragged his half-formed body across the kitchen floor towards the cookie jar. Danielle followed close behind, her eyes sparkling and her fingers clenching tightly around her teddy bear. When he reached the appropriate counter, Bones focused.

Slowly his body rose into the air, trembling at the effort it took to push even his slight mass into flight. It took a large handful of seconds for the bony child to reach the level of the countertop and steady his hover long enough to reach forwards and grab the clear jar full of cookies. Clicking his teeth happily, he dropped back to the ground with a clatter of bones.

"Cookies!" Danielle cheered, waiting for her brother to open the jar. When it was finally wrenched open, Danielle stuffed her hand inside and pulled out the stolen goods. "Thanks." She smiled at her brother, leaning over to quickly press a kiss to his skull.

Bones grabbed his own cookie and took a bite, his strange body managing to metabolize the sweet despite the fact that the boy lacked most of his major internal organs. He grinned over at his sister, green eyes sparkling as they feasted.

Only three months into life and they were already following in their father's rather dubious footsteps. But they were such innocent thieves.

* * *

_Family is not who you have or what they can do...  
it's the love that grows despite everything that can come between you._


	9. Drive

_Slowly ramping up the angst. :looks around for cops: :sees none: :slams foot down on accelerator: Never mind the slow… FULL THROTTLE YE-HAH!_

* * *

**Family  
**A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria

* * *

_…this is the 100 drabble challenge of a connected variety that will go in an order that resembles chapters so this collection of singular one-shots will kind of look a lot like a full-fledged fiction…_

* * *

Drabble 9: Drive

* * *

Squeezing her eyes shut, Danielle bit her lip and refused to scream in fear. She was being jostled around and bruised by the luggage in the limo's trunk. Curling up into a smaller ball and covering her head with her hands, she prayed for it all to stop. This was not at all what she thought her first ride in Dad's limousine would be like.

Of course, she conceded with a small sigh, she was pretty sure the trip would have been better if her father actually _knew_ that she was tagging along. Maybe he would have let her ride up front and watch the road zip by.

Just as Danielle was deciding that the world was coming to an end, the limousine hummed to a halt, the motor finally turning off. Danielle uncurled herself a bit, blinking into the darkness of the trunk. She waited for a long few moments after the _ka_-_chunk_ of the car doors closing rattled through the limo, then cautiously turned herself intangible.

Poking her head through the top of the car, she peered out at her newest surroundings. Her father was standing at the door to a strange house, taking to a large orange man. Danielle ducked back into the trunk before they spotted her: she was pretty sure her father would be mad if he found out she had snuck along on this trip.

Danielle waited as long as an almost four year old was able before looking around again. This time the yard was empty, the door of the weird house closed. With a grin, Danielle phased through the bottom of the limo and snuck quickly up to the side of the house. Crawling under a poorly-trimmed bush near the back corner of the house, Danielle felt a blaze of excitement. She was finally going to get to see where her father went when he vanished from their home.

It was only a few seconds before she heard voices through the window she was crouched under. One was a woman's voice that she, strangely, recognized. "Mommy?" Without further thought, she stood up on her tiptoes, reached up to grab the edge of the window, and then levitated slightly so that she could see into the weird house.

There she was. Danielle watched in amazement as her mother bustled around the strange house, grabbing cups and plates out of the cupboards and setting them at the table. Confused, Danielle pressed her nose against the window and continued to watch. How did her Mom get all the way over here? And how come she could pick things up? Her mother couldn't pick things up when she was at home – they went right through her.

Danielle was about to phase through the wall to go up and ask when someone new entered the room. Danielle's eyes widened when she saw the teenage boy, suddenly remembering a picture Vlad had shown her two weeks before. This was… her brother? But how? Her brother hadn't been created yet.

"Danny, honey, grab the sandwich meat out of the refrigerator," her mother said to the boy.

Danielle stared at the boy as he nodded and turned to do as their mother had requested. At one point, he hesitated and glanced towards the window, but Danielle merely turned herself invisible and continued to watch, amazed.

"Mom?" Danny asked - much to Danielle's astonishment since brothers didn't talk - "if I slice up the emergency ham, can we feed it to Vlad?"

"Don't be silly," their mother admonished softly, "that stuff is so old he'd get sick."

Danielle figured, based on her brother's expression, that he already knew that. Wrinkling her forehead, Danielle wondered why anyone would _want_ to make her father sick. Didn't everyone love her father the way she did?

Suddenly the large orange man lumbered into the room and Danielle flinched, sinking a little in the air. He was huge and powerful and _scary_. "Is the food ready?" the man boomed.

"Not yet Jack," their mother answered. "You could help, you know."

"I'll get the ghost-enhanced butter knife," the huge man said excitedly, then vanished down the steps.

Danielle watched as her brother and their mother exchanged a glance. "I hid all the ghost-enhanced kitchen utensils after last time, dear," their mother said. "Don't worry."

The kitchen door swung open once again and Danielle grinned as her father walked into the room. "Good afternoon," he said happily. "Is there anything I can do to help, Maddie?" He smiled lovingly at the woman.

"Dad's downstairs getting a butter knife," Danny muttered, "you could go down and help."

"I'm not going down into Jack's death trap of a basement." Her father's grin faltered for a moment, then he glanced around the kitchen with a smile.

Danielle felt her stomach grumble and, since her father was right there and surely wouldn't let her go hungry if he knew she was there, she turned herself visible and waved. When his gaze settled on her, his entire body stiffened. Danielle flinched and found that she couldn't move. Swallowing heavily, her eyes widened when she saw the fury in his eyes. Slowly, she lowered her hand and licked her lips. Turning visible suddenly didn't seem like such a smart decision.

"I need to use the bathroom, I'll be right back," her father said through his clenched teeth.

Danielle softly lowered herself to the ground, trembling as she waited for her father to appear. He was mad, she knew that. When he did, his red eyes were blazing. One hand flashed out and grabbed her by the arm. "What are you doing here?" he snarled.

"Daddy," she gasped in pain when his claws dug into her arm, "Daddy, sorry!"

"You're going to ruin everything! Get back to the car," he growled, tossing her a few feet down the side of the house. "Do _not_ come out – I will deal with you later."

Sobbing, Danielle held her bleeding arm close as she raced back to the limousine and crawled back into the trunk. Curling up into a ball in one of the corners, she let the tears flow freely from her eyes. She couldn't in her wildest imagination equate _that_ man with her father.

And there she waited, bleeding, for hours. Every few minutes she would hold her breath, listening for sounds that her father was returning to rescue her. He couldn't possibly have meant to hurt her like that. Any minute now, he would realize what had happened, race out of the house, pick her up, and love her again.

He didn't mean it – he _couldn't_ have meant it. He loved her.

What did she do that was so wrong?

* * *

_Family is not who you have or what they can do...  
it's the love that grows despite everything that can come between you._


	10. Breathe Again

_**Warning:**_ _child abuse_

* * *

**Family  
**A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria

* * *

_…this is the 100 drabble challenge of a connected variety that will go in an order that resembles chapters so this collection of singular one-shots will kind of look a lot like a full-fledged fiction…_

* * *

Drabble 10: Breathe Again

* * *

Danielle whimpered, standing still in the center of her room. Really, she wanted to be pressed into the corner, curled up and feeling safer, but she hurt too much to try to move. She trembled, terrified, bruises slowly appearing all over her. Her arms and legs hurt from where she'd been roughly grabbed. Her chest hurt from when she'd been tossed into the wall.

"Sorry," she sobbed, her breath rasping in her throat. Tears traced huge trails down her cheeks, her wide eyes staring blankly around the empty room. "I bad," she cried – not too loudly, however, "I sorry."

She was bad and she believed it. She shouldn't have snuck into her father's limousine; this was what she deserved for that. Her father loved her and he did this because he needed to. To make her understand, to protect her, he had punished her.

"I be… I be good," she promised to nobody, desperate for him to understand. "Daddy, I be good."

Moving her fingers slightly – they were still a little numb from one of the hits she had taken – she could feel the crusty, dried blood on her hand from where his sharp fingers had dug in earlier and had drawn blood. Mostly red, tinged with a supernatural green, the mess on her arm did a good job covering up the hand-shaped bruises that were forming.

Her unsteady legs unable to hold her upright anymore, she sank to her knees, crying out in pain, new tears rushing down her cheeks. "Daddy, Daddy, I be good. I sorry!"

Surely her father would appear at any moment, rush in and take away the pain and hurt. Soon she would be punished enough for being bad. She would never do anything that would make her father need to do this to her ever again.

'_I hate doing this to you, Danielle_,' he had said, tears in his own eyes as he punished his daughter. '_But I have to. You've been a bad girl.'_

She had made her father do this, that much was clear in her almost-four-year-old mind. Her father loved her very much and it had hurt him to have to punish her. It was her fault she was being punished.

It was her fault she had made her father cry and that tore at her young heart like nothing else. She loved her father as much as any child – her entire universe revolved around him – and she wouldn't do anything that would hurt him.

"I bad," she sobbed one last time to the empty room, "I be good. I promise."

The door clicked open and her father walked in, slowly taking in the sight of his young, trembling daughter. "Danielle?" He slipped through the room, kneeling down in front of her, his eyes calm and steady as they gazed into hers.

"I sorry," she whispered, wanting to throw herself into his arms and have him make it all better. She had made him cry, she had hurt him inside, and she needed to make him understand that she knew that it was her fault. She wouldn't do it again. "I be good."

For a long moment, icy blue eyes met her sapphire ones, judging the extent of her apology. Then he nodded, a small smile appearing on his face. "Okay, Danielle. I accept your apology."

With a gasp, happiness cascading through her, Danielle pushed herself to her feet and threw her arms around his neck. She flinched in pain when his arms wrapped securely around her for a moment, but the knowledge that he loved her again warmed her heart.

A sharp poke in her arm made her gasp, but her father just held her close. "It's okay, Danielle," he murmured. "It'll make the pain go away."

Danielle let a small smile cross her face as blackness started to eat at her mind. She had known that her father would come and take the pain away – he loved her and that's what father's did. "Love you," she breathed as she slipped into unconsciousness, her heart full of love and her mind determined to never force her father to hurt her ever again.

Vlad picked her up carefully, placing her gently on the small bed before cleaning the wound on her arm and wrapping it up. His fingers rested in her soft hair for a moment as she slept, his eyes sad as he surveyed the purple and blue bruises that covered her slim arms. "Don't make me do that again," he whispered to her. "Don't be bad. Be good."

When he stepped out of the room, Vlad took a deep, shuddering breath. That was over. Hopefully she'd learn her lesson. Hopefully he'd never have to do that again.

Pushing the incident out of his mind, Vlad let a smile cross his face. Striding confidently into a new world, he could breathe again.

* * *

_Family is not who you have or what they can do...  
it's the love that grows despite everything that can come between you._


	11. Memory

_**Warning:**_ _implied_ _child abuse and very heavy on the angst at the end._

_Thank you to Luiz4200, Anne Camp aka Obi-quiet, Amazing Bluie, disappearingirl, Oats-FFCC27, Invader Johnny, Jessica01, h0meskill3tt, and CatalystOfTheSoul for reviewing drabble 10!_

* * *

**Family  
**A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria

* * *

_…this is the 100 drabble challenge of a connected variety that will go in an order that resembles chapters so this collection of singular one-shots will kind of look a lot like a full-fledged fiction…_

* * *

Drabble 11: Memory

* * *

Vladimir Masters glared at a certain green book on his library shelf, willing the thing to burst into flame. Unfortunately for Vlad, although he had many powers beyond that of your average human being, causing something to spontaneously combust wasn't one of them. Minor singeing he could do. Total and instant obliteration was entirely possible. But the joy of watching the thing slowly burn to ashes without getting up and actually hitting it with a torch was beyond him.

He was the epitome of a successful businessman: ruthless, goal-oriented, and organized. He had important papers and books categorized on the shelves in the most efficient manner possible and he could, within a matter of seconds, locate any book that he was looking for.

On the downside, he knew precisely where that particular book was sitting. It was stuffed between the 'Guide to Fungus' Jack had given him a few years previous and a battered copy of 'Evil Medieval Conquerors'. Both books, Vlad thought with a sort of vindictive pleasure, were proper things to wedge in around his family album. Not only were they in alphabetical order, but they fit in theme-wise: poisonous fungi and evil overlords.

Vlad sighed, ripping his eyes away from the old green photo album and leaning forwards. Resting his elbows on his desk, Vlad rubbed at his temples. There was no good reason to keep that book, but he'd never gotten up the nerve to throw it out.

Him, Vladimir Masters, seventeenth richest man on the planet, and he couldn't throw out a stupid book. It was pitiful. With a half-snarl, Vlad pushed himself out of his chair and stormed across the room, grabbing the book in his hands and scowling down at it. Years and years later, maybe he could finally get rid of the thing.

"Daddy?"

Vlad started, surprised at the sudden voice. He glanced around his large office, his eyes alighting on Danielle's tiny form. The girl had her head lowered, her back pressed against the wall next to the door. "What, Danielle?" he asked, distracted.

Her blue eyes flickered up to meet his, obviously changing what she was going to say as her mouth opened. "What you looking at?"

"It's just an old book," Vlad muttered darkly, carrying it with him back to his desk. "My family album."

"What's a family album?" she asked softly, cautiously.

Vlad's mouth twisted into a grimace. "Pictures of my family. Parents, grandparents, stuff like that." He dropped it onto his desk and sank back into his chair.

"Can I see?"

Vlad froze, his knuckles going white on the arm rests of the chair, his eyes fixed on the dusty green photo album, his heart trying to stop in his chest. _Open_ the book? He was just going to throw it out, not actually look at it.

"It okay," Danielle quickly backpedalled, "I don't wanna see." She didn't move an inch away from the wall, her eyes staying on his tense body.

Slowly, Vlad took a deep breath. "No," he finally said, his voice cracking at how strung out he was over something as stupid as a small book. "I'm going to get rid of it. We might as well look at it one last time."

Danielle didn't look convinced, but she slipped out of the shadows and walked across the room towards her father's desk. Vlad winced a bit when he saw the dark bruises still ringing her arms and the green tinge to the skin around her eyes. When Danielle stopped a few feet away from him, Vlad took a deep breath, grabbed the book of photos, and settled down on the ground next to her. The young girl hesitated, but then sank down next to him.

The first page was empty, save for a calligraphied '_Masters' Family'_ scrawled across the white vellum. After reading it to the young girl, Vlad flipped the page. Three badly faded photographs stared back at them, all the people posed and dressed in fancy clothes. "These are my great-grandparents and their families," Vlad said softly, running his hand over the plastic cover to the page. "They were one of the first families in the area to ever get their photographs taken."

"They dressed funny," Danielle offered with a small smile.

"Yes, yes they did," Vlad whispered. He flipped to the next page, then the next, and the next, showing Danielle numerous pictures of his grandparents and explaining when they were taken. "I loved my grandparents a lot," Vlad said distantly. "I hated it when they died. A lot of my life died with them, that year."

Danielle looked up at her father, surprised to see the tears in his eyes. "How they die?"

"Car crash." Vlad fell silent, unwilling to continue, but then he took a deep breath. "They took me in when I was twelve, after I ran away from my parents. They raised me for a few years and gave me a life I never thought was possible. Just before I turned sixteen they…" He shook his head and sighed. "They died. They were one of the reasons I went into paranormal studies at college. Ghost school," he clarified when he saw the question in Danielle's eyes. "I thought maybe I could find them some day."

"Did you?"

Vlad shook his head. "No. I never did find them."

Danielle waited a moment, then reached forwards and turned the page, looking down at a new set of pictures. Some in grainy black and white, others in faded color, a new set of faces were looking out at her. "Who this?"

"Those are my parents," Vlad whispered, slinking his arm around Danielle's thin form and unconsciously holding her a little closer. "Camille and Darren Vladimir Masters."

"They no look happy," Danielle commented, blinking down at them. None of the faces in the pictures, save for a lone baby boy, were smiling.

"No, I don't think they were ever happy." Vlad was staring distantly out the window, refusing to look down at the faces of his family.

Danielle sensed that this was a sensitive topic, but she asked the question anyway. "Where they?"

"They died eighteen years ago," Vlad said, his voice barely a whisper, "in a car crash."

Thinking that she would be pressing her luck to find out more about her family, Danielle stayed quiet, just flipping through the photo album while her father gazed out the window. Dozens of pictures of the same two people – Camille and Darren, her grandparents – frowned out at her from the pages. Some of the pictures contained a young boy… sometimes laughing, sometimes playing, sometimes sleeping.

Then there was a picture of the boy, maybe six or seven years old, and he wasn't so happy anymore. He had a cake sitting in front of him with more candles than Danielle could count, his eyes staring blankly. Danielle leaned closer, her fingers reaching up to touch the battered picture. Bruises circled around the boy's arms and one of his eyes was dark and swollen.

"I fell down," Vlad breathed, somehow knowing which picture drew Danielle's attention when out looking down. "That's what I told everyone for years. I fell down."

Danielle flipped quickly through the rest of the pages, her eyes taking in the pictures of the boy as he grew, the pictures showing evidence of how often her father had 'fallen down'. Even Danielle, at almost four, knew that her father hadn't just fallen down. Her fingers reached up to touch the circular bruises around her arms that so matched the ones in the pictures.

"Love you, Daddy," she whispered, closing the book and pushing it under the desk with her foot.

Vlad looked at her, his eyes holding the same blank look they had all those years ago at his birthday party. He could see the bruises around her eyes and the careful way she held herself. "Do you?" he said softly.

She nodded, nestling herself into his lap and closing her eyes. "Love you."

Vlad brushed his hand gently through her hair, but couldn't find the words in him to respond.

* * *

_Family is not who you have or what they can do...  
it's the love that grows despite everything that can come between you._


	12. Insanity

_Apparently it's not clear: I DO NOT CONDONE CHILD ABUSE. Please don't accuse me otherwise. This story, yes, has child abuse in it, but read the quote at the end. This story is, ultimately, a story about family and its undying love._

_Thank you to dizappearingirl, hanyou-halfa, inukagome15, Kinoshita Kristanite, werewolf5, Oats-FFCC27, CatalystOfTheSoul, TPcrazy, Luiz4200, Invader Johnny, Anne Camp aka Obi-quiet, and Shining Zephyr for reviewing drabble 11! __And thank you to all of you on DA who commented on my journal. I really appreciate you taking the time to send me your thoughts._

_A break from the angst, but it will return!_

* * *

**Family  
**A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria

* * *

_…this is the 100 drabble challenge of a connected variety that will go in an order that resembles chapters so this collection of singular one-shots will kind of look a lot like a full-fledged fiction…_

* * *

Drabble 12: Insanity

* * *

Bones army-crawled through the bushes, his sparkling green eyes glowing in the faint shadows. His green body seemed to blend in with the late summer leaves, camouflaging him from sight. Hiding wasn't really the point of their game – they weren't playing hide and seek, after all – but it was sure helpful. He was the slowest moving of the four siblings and, when playing tag, being slow wasn't much of an asset. Besides, he was sick of being 'it'.

He froze when he felt the cold tingle along his spine that signaled the approach of one of his siblings. When Spark flashed overhead, zipping around like a tiny firefly and apparently not noticing his hiding spot, Bones relaxed at bit.

"Bones!" Danielle suddenly gasped, dropping to her hands and knees unexpectedly next to him. "Muscles 'it' now."

With a grin, Bones nodded and pointed in the direction he was headed. The garden in their home's large back yard was the perfect place for a game of tag. Danielle's eyes lit up, an excited giggle spilling out of her mouth. After just a few seconds, Danielle took off, pelting towards the garden, a small scream of joy escaping from her mouth as she ran.

Bones watched her run and shook his head. He knew that he would never be able to run… he didn't have any legs… but he still wished that he could join her. Instead, he was confined to the ground or to his rather dismal flying abilities. Spark was the only one of the four to have developed any real skill at flight yet.

The ground shook as Muscles lumbered into view. All of them were almost four years old, but Muscles was more like a ten-year-old in appearance. His dim eyes scanned the area, glittering with excitement over getting to play a game that he actually understood. He hummed as he made a small circle, finally spotting movement in the garden and bounding off in that direction.

Bones took the opportunity to pull himself out of the bushes and make a bee-line for the cover of the garden hedges. If he could make it to the roses, he'd be home free for a bit.

About halfway there, the ground rumbled. Bones jerked his head around to see Muscles pounding towards him. Digging his fingers into the ground, Bones struggled to make some sort of headway. If he didn't make it to the bushes before Muscles got him, not only would he be squashed beyond all recognition, he would be 'it'. Again.

A foot crashed into the ground just behind him and a large shadow suddenly fell over Bones. He glanced up, his sparkling eyes wide when he saw Muscles coming towards him in a flying leap.

One hundred nine pounds of pure mass landing on twenty-two pounds of spectrally-enhanced bone and ectoplasm. Bones was smart, especially when compared to his brothers, but it didn't take much a rocket scientist to realize that the smaller of the two wasn't going to end up in a good spot. In the split second he had left of his life, Bones pulled his bony arms over his skull, closed his eyes, and turned himself intangible.

He felt Muscles' body slam into the grass around him like a minor earthquake. The larger ghost child bounced a bit, skidded, and tumbled into the hedges. Bones, peeking out from between his fingers and startled at the fact that he was still alive, took the opportunity to change direction and make a break for it.

Muscles, meanwhile, was thoroughly perplexed by what had just happened. His brain was churning away at the fact that he hadn't hit his brother, but it wasn't yet able to comprehend why not. He pushed himself to his feet, swaying slightly, dizzy at the crash he'd just went through.

When he glanced over his shoulder, he saw his skeleton-like brother vanish under a bush and then his mind finally caught up with what had happened. For a second he stood there, a sour expression on his face as he tried to figure out if using intangibility was fair during tag. Then Spark drifted by and he forgot his problem, chasing after his flying brother.

Spark's tiny eyes widened when he caught sight of the giant lumbering towards him. He dropped through the air, tumbling head over heels as he momentarily lost control of his flight. By the time he regained control, his brother was perilously close. Zipping and darting in as many directions as he could, Spark tried to escape his brother's grasping hands.

One of the monstrous hands clipped him mid-zag and Spark was sent reeling through the air, pain flaring along his tiny body. He collided with a large bush and tumbled to the ground. Lying perfectly still, his eyes closed as he adjusted to the fact that he was suddenly so still and not moving, Spark could hear (and feel) his mountain of a brother dash off.

When a shadow fell over him, Spark opened his eyes. Danielle's blue eyes were staring down at him, full of concern. "You okay?" she asked, crouching down to get a better look. "I get Daddy?"

Spark was too small for Danielle to make out the smile on his face. He purposefully laid still, watching in growing excitement as she finally reached out with one hand to pick him up. Spark watched the hand grow nearer and nearer… and at the last moment jumped into the air and tagged her with his hand. Sending out a flare of supernatural energy that meant nothing if not 'tag, you're it!' in the ghost world, he zipped off into the garden.

Danielle, for her part, blinked at the sudden turn of events, but then laughed. Climbing back to her feet, she raced off into the garden, determined to catch someone new on this beautiful, late summer day.

* * *

_Family is not who you have or what they can do...  
it's the love that grows despite everything that can come between you._


	13. Misfortune

_**Warning: **minor child abuse_

_Thank you to The dark and Evil PHANTOM, dizappearingirl, Dannyphantomfreeek, Oats-FFCC27, jessica01, Luiz4200, Amazing Bluie, Invader Johnny, TPcrazy, CatalystOfTheSoul, and inukagome15 for reviewing drabble 12! Sorry you got no replies... either FFN isn't sending me the reviews or my email has wonked out again. Yes, I realize 'Bones' is blackened with red eyes in 'Kindred Spirits' - I'm getting to it. I gotta do a drabble about 'through the fire' about SOMETHING. And yes, in order for Danielle to be four months old and being doing all of this stuff, she'd have to have an IQ of 1200._

* * *

**Family  
**A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria

* * *

_…this is the 100 drabble challenge of a connected variety that will go in an order that resembles chapters so this collection of singular one-shots will kind of look a lot like a full-fledged fiction…_

* * *

Drabble 13: Misfortune

* * *

"S-say A, ah," the Maddie program instructed, pointing one of its holographic fingers at the giant capital A that had appeared on the computer screen.

Danielle fidgeted in her desk, completely at a loss as to how to take this. Up until today, her days had been filled with mindless games and chasing her brothers around the mansion while trying to stay out of her father's way. Now she was confined to a chair, repeating stupid sounds. "Ay, ah," she said after a moment.

"Good, Dan-Danielle. This is the letter A."

The Maddie program switched to the next letter in its database. "Say D, d-d-duh."

"Dee, duck," Danielle parroted back, glancing out the window at the sun. "Mommy, I go play now?"

"N-no, you may not," her mother stuttered, "Vlad-ad has scheduled y-you for a half-hour of-of-of lessons each d-day. Say it again. D, duh."

"Mommy, this _boring_. I want play."

The Maddie program would not be coerced. It didn't have the programming necessary to have her heart bent by the pleading look her only daughter was giving her. "S-say it, please. D, duh."

"Dee, duck." Danielle scowled and sat back in her chair, not understanding the point of this. Repeating sounds and looking at squiggles was not her idea of a fun way to spend her day. Already her toes were tapping and her fingers were twitching and she really wanted to go out and play. "Dee, duck, dee, duck, dee, duck," she mumbled.

"'D', duh," her mother said again.

"Dee, duh," Danielle said finally, sighing when her mother did nothing but change the look of the squiggle on the screen.

"B, buh."

Danielle decided she'd had enough of this. Already the lesson had gone on for an eternity, it was boring, and she wanted to go outside and play tag. "Bee, buck," she said, turned herself intangible, and fell through the floor.

Giggling a bit as she got to her feet and crept down the hallway, Danielle figured that was that. Her mother couldn't pick her up and _bring _her back to that room, now could she? Enough of this 'school', the young girl was going to go out and…

"Dan-Dan-Danielle Masters."

She froze, glancing over her shoulder just as her mother materialized into view. "I want go play, Mommy," she pleaded.

The Maddie program was not swayed. "P-please return to the cl-classroom or I-I-I will have to call-call your father."

Danielle hesitated before she answered, figuring she could get one more plea in before she was forced to go back to that boring room. She had no doubt her mother would go get her father... and that sounded like a bad idea. Begging had never done any good in the past, her mother never backed down, but she thought she might as well give it a try. "It _boring_!"

"It's boring, is it?"

"Good mor-mor-morning, Sweetie," instantly chirped the Maddie program as Vlad swept into view.

Fixing her gaze on the ground, Danielle bit her lip, but nodded in response to her father's question. She hadn't expected to see him here. Her plan had been to go back to the room before he was called.

"What have you learned so far?" Vlad, after a moment's hesitation, knelt down next to his daughter.

"Bee-buck," she answered dutifully.

Vlad blinked at his daughter's strange response, looking up at the hologram he had programmed to teach the clones basic reading and writing skills with a question in his eyes, but the Maddie program didn't notice. After a long moment, Vlad let out a breath. "Maybe you need a real teacher," he muttered, more to himself than to anyone.

"Maybe," Danielle hedged, sneaking a glance up at her father. He didn't seem to be mad at her for falling through the floor and leaving 'school'. "I go play now? I be good, I play."

At her father's distracted nod, Danielle grinned and made a bee-line for the back yard where all of her brothers would already be playing without her. The shortest distance between where she was and where she wanted to be was a straight line – even for an almost-four-year-old – and the three walls that stood in the way didn't matter to Danielle. After a brief running start, she phased cleanly through the first wall and the second.

What she wasn't expecting was the lamp, positioned carefully on the other side of that second wall, that she ran straight into a split second after regaining her tangibility. She slammed her nose into the tall pole, blood instantly pooling in the back of her throat and trickling down her face. The old, heavy lamp also took a hit, teetering for a moment before crashing to the ground in a shattering of glass.

Danielle's eyes were wide with shock and pain as her warm blood continued to ooze down her face and choke her throat. One hand came up to touch her nose, coming away with drops of the slick, crimson liquid staining her fingertips.

It was instants later that her father stepped through the wall behind her, wondering what the noise had been. His eyes took in the broken lamp and he turned towards his daughter, his eyes flaring angrily. "You broke my lamp!" He couldn't seem to see the fear and the surprise reflecting in Danielle's face or the way she trembled, surrounded by sharp shards of glass.

All he could see was his precious antique lamp, one of his only heirlooms that he liked, smashed into countless irreparable pieces.

Danielle took a small step backwards, her shoe crunching on a small glass shard. "I, I, I," she stuttered, her trembling growing to a visible shake. She didn't like it when her father got angry. It was like he became a different person. "Daddy, I…"

She didn't get out another word before Vlad grabbed her arms and shook her slightly, glaring at her. "Why did you do that? _Why_?"

"Accident," she whispered. "I sorry."

His fingers clenched painfully around her arms. The bruises that had just faded away were, no doubt, being replaced by new ones. "An accident?" he said scathingly. "Why didn't you watch where you were going?"

Danielle couldn't really see how she could have been watching were she was going, being that she'd just walked through the wall, but she kept her mouth shut. That sounded like an answer that would make her father more angry with her. Instead, she stuck with her previous response. "I sorry." A small whimper snuck out of her lips, her hands starting to go numb from his tight grip and pain flashing up her arms.

It was that small sound – pain mixed with fear – that shook Vlad out of his fury. He stared at his daughter, seeing the terror on her pale face for the first time. His eyes flickered down to where he was grabbing her arms and then he abruptly let her go. Standing up and storming to the other side of the room, Vlad snarled to himself.

Danielle didn't dare make a sound. She remembered all too well how much her father's wrath hurt.

"Go to your room," Vlad finally ground out.

Blood still running down her face, Danielle looked up at her father. She took a small step forwards, wondering if he'd help her with her hurt nose, wondering if she should apologize again, wondering if she should help clean up first.

"Go. To. Your. Room."

Danielle didn't waste another second. She twirled and fled, staying safely intangible the entire way. Grabbing her blue teddy bear off of her bed, she curled up in the corner of her room and finally let her sobs of pain and fear rush through her.

As for Vlad, he sank into a chair, closing his eyes and rubbing his temples with his fingers. A strange feeling of disappointment was welling up inside of him – a feeling he wasn't used to dealing with. Not disappointment in Danielle…

Disappointment in himself.

* * *

_Family is not who you have or what they can do...  
it's the love that grows despite everything that can come between you._


	14. Smile

_Thank you to h0meskill3tt, Oats-FFCC27, Anne Camp aka Obi-Quiet, Nylah, Luiz4200, inukagome15, Invader Johnny, CatalystOfTheSoul, and Shining Zephyr for reviewing drabble 13! _

* * *

**Family  
**A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria

* * *

_…this is the 100 drabble challenge of a connected variety that will go in an order that resembles chapters so this collection of singular one-shots will kind of look a lot like a full-fledged fiction…_

* * *

Drabble 14: Smile

* * *

Danielle scowled, pulling her blanket closer around herself. It was September 8th and her father was nowhere to be found. Again. Normally this wouldn't bother her too much – her father did have the distinct ability to disappear into thin air without warning – but the fact that he was gone today hurt.

She'd searched the mansion the minute she'd woken up, finding the place empty of everyone but her brothers and the strange old woman Vlad had hired a few days previously to, so he'd said, keep the four of them out of trouble. Breakfast had been all too quiet, her brothers (as usual) not saying a word and the old woman refusing to speak and eat at the same time. None of Danielle's questions had been answered, none of the dropped hints picked up on, none of the long sighs responded to.

The day had passed drearily after that, none of them up to going out to play in the cold drizzle. Between naps, 'school', and watching TV, the four children had tried to figure out what they could do indoors. The boys had suggested a game of intangible tag through the house sometime after lunch, but Danielle had vetoed that as quickly as it had been brought up.

Now, nearly an hour after they had eaten a silent and incredibly depressing supper, Danielle was sitting in her room, on her bed, blanket around her shoulders, scowling down at the teddy bear sitting in her lap. The bear had been her first birthday present – not that that she really remembered it – exactly three months beforehand.

It was September 8th. She was officially four (months) old. And nobody seemed to care.

"It our birthday," she said to the bear. "I four!" In an attempt to back up her words, she held up three fingers, showing them to the plushie. "See?"

The bear didn't answer, but Danielle could have sworn that it nodded sympathetically. Four was getting awfully old; people should definitely remember that it's one's birthday by that point. Especially fathers, brothers, and strange old women with two-colored eyes and the scariest, curliest hair Danielle had ever seen.

"'Zactly," she pronounced. "I _important_."

That didn't make the frown disappear from her face. She hadn't been expecting much today – her birthdays, what she could remember of them, never involved much – but someone just _mentioning_ it would have been nice. One 'Happy Birthday, Danielle!' didn't seem like too much to ask. Now it was almost too late. In a bit she'd have to go to sleep, then tomorrow would come, and it wouldn't be her birthday anymore.

Danielle managed to get a wan smile on her face for her teddy bear, imagining that it had just wished her happy birthday. "Thank you," she said softly, hugging the bear to her. If nothing else, she'd gotten _one_…

"What that?"

Something strange was happening over in one corner of her room. Something was appearing through the wall – a strange shape in the shadows, unsteady, tilting dramatically, floating… Green eyes sparkled like emeralds suddenly shimmered into view, the face behind them resolving into a skull-like head. "Bones!"

Her brother clicked his teeth, flying slowly and hesitantly towards her bed. He didn't quite make it, instead choosing to set his burden down on the ground about half way, settling down onto his stomach next to it. Scuttling off the bed, Danielle walked over to her brother and crouched down, staring at the strange object he'd carried to her room before realizing what it was.

Her eyes went wide, surprise making her look up at her brother. "Where come from?"

Picking up one hand, Bones twirled his fingers next to his head – the silent brothers' name for the strange old woman.

"For us?"

At Bones's nod, Danielle's smile bloomed, her eyes sparkling. Lying on the ground between them was a small cake, complete with frosting and swirly icing. Bones had been helping the strange old woman bake it in the kitchen after dinner and had carted it all the way to his sister's room.

Being four, the lack of forks and plates did nothing to discourage the two siblings from digging in to the chocolate cake. Soon, fingers were covered in icing and crumbles and there wasn't much left of the cake. Danielle, with a grin, reached down for another handful.

Bones reached down as well, but hesitated with the moist cake in his hand. After all the batter he'd eaten in the kitchen helping to make the cake, he wasn't very hungry anymore. He did, however, have a much better idea of what to do with his handful of cake. Taking careful aim, he tossed his piece at his sister.

It hit Danielle straight in the face. She squealed, sitting backwards and rubbing at her face with her hands, laughter bubbling up even as she realized what had just happened. Glancing up moments later, eyes glittering with evil intent, she grabbed for a handful of cake and launched it in her brother's direction. This meant war.

Later, lying in the midst of the cake remains and wondering how much trouble she'd get in for the mess they'd created, Danielle couldn't help but smile. She figured this had ended up being a birthday to remember.

* * *

_Family is not who you have or what they can do...  
it's the love that grows despite everything that can come between you._


	15. Silence

__

**Note: **To those of you who want 'Masks' updated, my (evil) plot goes thusly: finish the chapter of 'Pits' first, as it's basically done and I just need to convince myself it's good enough to post… THEN finish the chapter of 'Masks'. I do this because (1) 'Pits' hasn't been updated in forever and (2) I'm contemplating (which means maybe, not for sure) extending the 'Masks' story beyond the four chapters that were planned… a new story arc or something. If I do, since I REALLY enjoy foreshadowing, so I'd want to know if I'm precluding to something. The whole reason I'm even thinking about continuing is because I'm a selfish creature at heart – the fact that I'm getting 80-90 reviews PER CHAPTER makes me want to continue. XD Anywho… that's where that lies. Dannyphantomfreeek – I will update, do not you worry. But I appreciate the daily reminders, even if I can't reply to them.

Thank you to Erin, Luiz4200, katiesparks, Tunderstorm101, h0meskill3tt, inukagome15, TPcrazy, werewolf5, Oats-FFCC27, dizappearingirl, Invader Johnny, CatalystOfTheSoul, Anne Camp aka Obi-Quiet, santeria, and hanyou-halfa for reviewing drabble 14!

* * *

**Family  
**A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria

* * *

_…this is the 100 drabble challenge of a connected variety that will go in an order that resembles chapters so this collection of singular one-shots will kind of look a lot like a full-fledged fiction…_

* * *

Drabble 15: Silence

* * *

Vlad stared out the window of his limousine, watching the trees pass quietly by as the car sped towards one of his mansions. Currently, he owned four: one in Wisconsin, one in Colorado, one in California, and the one he was heading towards in upstate Washington. His latest business venture had gone off without a hitch and, as a new twist, the man had seemed truly pleased to be dealing with the illustrious Vlad Masters. No overshadowing, bribery, blackmail, or arm twisting was needed to get _exactly_ what the billionaire wanted.

It had almost felt… wrong. After nearly twenty years of rather dubious business practices, conducting a completely above-board venture was extremely strange. No doubt his various accountants, used to overlooking the odd math that Vlad's variety of businesses employed to keep their books straight, would be looking at this particular transaction cross-eyed for weeks. There was simply nothing even vaguely illegal to find.

He sighed. That took some of the fun out of it, really. No plotting. No maneuvering. No mental game of chess. He really did prefer it the other way, even if it meant some semi-legal actions. Those dealings were, without a doubt, more mentally stimulating.

"Sir?"

Vlad looked up, shaking his head at his driver's unasked question. "Nothing. Just thinking."

The man smiled into the rearview mirror. "Sorry, sir. We'll be arriving at the house in about a half-hour."

With a nod, Vlad reached forwards and pushed the button to raise the glass, cutting himself off from the driver. Sitting back, he let his eyes drift closed, his mind drifting around in curious circles. He didn't really have any specific thoughts. It all kind of just muddled around in his brain, drifting gently from one topic to the next, never really setting on any one idea. It was that kind of a day, that kind of a car ride, that kind of moment.

At some point, listening to the silence broken only by the steady thrum of his limo's motor, Vlad fell asleep.

-o0o-o0o-o0o-o0o-

_"Grandma…" Vlad hesitated, his fifteen-year-old eyes wide as he took in the sight of the cloth-covered stretchers. The morgue was cool, even on the hot summer day, and two gurneys had been pulled out of the refrigeration units. Vlad knew without a doubt who was underneath; he didn't really need to go see._

_His mother, for once not lost in a daze of alcohol and drugs, brushed past him. She hadn't ever truly blamed her son for running away – and she really didn't want him back. Walking briskly to the two stretchers, she pulled back the covers on each one, grimacing slightly at the sight, then turned and nodded to the policemen. It was her parents._

_"How'd they die?" one of the officers asked softly as Vlad's mother paid her respects, but more than loud enough for Vlad's sensitive ears to pick up. "Car accident?"_

_"Weren't no accident," the other, older man whispered back. "Brake line was cut, I heard."_

_Vlad's knuckles whitened as he clenched his fingers into fists. He tried to stop listening, to walk over and say goodbye to the two people who had taken him in and loved him for the past almost four years… but the two men continued to whisper. And Vlad continued to listen._

_"Ouch. Murder? Got any suspects yet?"_

_The older officer snorted. "Them ain't even in the ground yet, 'course not. But good money'd be on that son-in-law of theirs. He seems the type. Angry."_

_"They gonna press charges?"_

_"Not without a lot more evidence than I think'll turn up, they won't. I got a nose for pickin' out unsolvable cases, and this one stinks of it."_

_"But you think it's this son-in-law…" The younger officer sounded unsure._

_"Sure as rain falls down rather than up. If I could find a motive, some decent evidence, and get someone to listen to me, I'd have this case in the bag."_

_Blinking away tears, Vlad focused his eyes on the gray-colored tiles on the floor. Evidence wouldn't ever be found, he was sure. Vlad knew that his father got away with just about everything and never got caught. As for motive, Vlad could find at least one without even trying. His father had been adamant about being able to visit his son. Just as stubborn and righteously justified, his grandparents had worked furiously to keep the man out of their grandson's life._

_His grandparents had tried to hide it from him, but he'd seen the evidence of his father's anger. The abusive phone calls, the escalating damage to his grandparents' property, the threats… it all added up to something that Vlad could see very clearly._

_His father had killed his grandparents. Blood welled up as his fingernails cut into his palms. For the first time in Vlad's young and tortured life, he felt true anger. Pure fury bubbled inside of him, the desire for revenge kindled in his heart. There was no physical evidence… there never would be. But Vlad knew._

_"Mom…" he trailed off what he was going to say, blinking up at his mother in startled comprehension. No tears. No surprise. No sorrow. She knew._ She knew_. She'd known all along that it was going to happen, that it had happened, who had done it… she knew._

_Camille Masters walked, head high, through the door of the morgue and out into the hallway, chatting with the officers who followed her out and never once looking at her son. Vlad did nothing but stare at her retreating back, suddenly finding it inside of him to walk over to the stretchers and pull back the sheets._

_His grandparents looked awful, but Vlad couldn't see that. He saw, for the few moments he stood there, the love that had sparkled in their eyes. A love that had been wrenched out of his grasp before he had even come to appreciate that it was there for him to have._

_Seconds after his softly recovered his grandparents' faces, Vlad was out the door of the morgue, ignoring his mother's half-hearted calls for him to come back, and never stopped running. Never looked back. His parents never saw him again._

_Eactly seven years later, to the day, Camille and Darren Masters died in a car accident on the same stretch of road his grandparents had died on. The brake line had been cut._

-o0o-o0o-o0o-o0o-

"Sir?"

Vlad jumped, his eyes flicking open, staring around him in surprise. For just a moment, he was trapped in the mind of a lost fifteen-year-old, but then he took a breath and straightened his jacket. "Yes."

"We've arrived."

Glancing out the tinted windows, Vlad looked up at the mansion, noting with a slight smile that it was still standing. None of the four clones had destroyed the place in his absence. He knew that the instant he stepped through the front door, Danielle would be on him, begging to know about every last moment of his trip. He wouldn't get a moment of silence for hours.

But, perhaps, silence wasn't all it was cracked up to be. After all, it brought back nothing but bad memories. And he was, just a bit, looking forward to hearing his daughter's voice.

* * *

_Family is not who you have or what they can do...  
it's the love that grows despite everything that can come between you._


	16. Questioning

__

Thank you to Nylah, Amazing Bluie, h0meskill3tt, Thunderstorm101, inukagome15, TPcrazy, Oas-FFCC27, dizappearingirl, CatalystOfTheSoul, Invader Johnny, Shining Zephyr, and katieparks for reviewing drabble 15!

* * *

**Family  
**A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria

* * *

_…this is the 100 drabble challenge of a connected variety that will go in an order that resembles chapters so this collection of singular one-shots will kind of look a lot like a full-fledged fiction…_

* * *

Drabble 16: Questioning

* * *

"Where do Daddy go?"

"Where _did_ Daddy go," the old woman corrected vaguely as she stirred the giant pot of pasta. She wasn't entirely sure what was up with these four children, but Mr. Masters paid well enough for her to keep her mouth shut. The excuse she'd been given – four siblings that had been doused in radiation and had been brutally mutilated by the exposure – was improbable, but Genie didn't care to ask any further questions about it. Fifty grand a year to watch four children was nicer than most jobs would pay, especially since all living expenses were taken care of, but the hundred grand she was being slipped to stay quiet about what she saw was the icing on the cake. If the man wished to raise the children in silence, he had the money to do so and she wasn't going to ruin it for him.

The girl scowled, her eyes flickering green for a moment. "Where _did_ Daddy go?" she asked again when it became clear she wasn't going to get her answer until she said it correctly.

"He's on a business meeting."

"_Again_?"

Genie nodded. "Do you want to help make lunch?" She glanced down at the young girl, wondering if she'd actually accept the offer. Although the most normal seeming of the four, Danielle was very prone to doing whatever she wanted and nothing more – a trait she, no doubt, got from her father.

The girl thought about it. "Bones help?"

Genie opened her mouth to correct the girl's speech, but then decided against it. Danielle's speech was childish, even for a four-year-old, but she was the only one of the four who could actually talk. With their father vanishing for long periods of time and with no other role models to learn to speak from, it only made sense for her speaking abilities to be delayed slightly. But there was only so much correcting one person could take in a day, and Genie was sick of repeating every one of Danielle's sentences. "No, Bones can stay where he is. It'd be just you and me."

Danielle didn't look convinced about that. But she nodded after a moment and floated into the air, taking the spoon from her nanny and continuing to stir.

"Don't touch the stove, it's hot." Genie moved away, keeping a close eye on the girl. The first time any of the children had levitated in her presence, Genie had been startled – to say the least. For the salary she was making, though, she got over it quickly. This was only her fifth day of work and already she was used to the strange abilities of the children.

"Genie," Danielle asked after a moment, "where you come from?"

"Originally? A place called Minnesota." Carefully checking to make sure the garlic sticks weren't burning, Genie smiled over at Danielle. "Lots of trees and water and bugs. But I moved here, to Washington, almost thirty years ago."

Danielle quietly stirred the pot of noodles. "Daddy go Mini-sodas?"

With a laugh, Genie corrected her, and started getting out the plates and cups for the table. "Minne_sota_, dear. And no, I think your father is in New Jersey today. He said something about firing someone at some corporation."

"When Daddy come back?"

"He said he'd be back by tomorrow evening."

"I go next time." Danielle's voice was full of conviction. Genie hesitated, her hands full of cups, looking at the young girl. "I go, and Daddy be happy I go. We go… firing someone."

With a small smile, Genie set the cups down. "Maybe, sweetheart. You never know." In her heart, Genie knew that the children would never be allowed to go with their father on one of his business trips. They were just too… different. But she couldn't find it in her to tell that to the girl.

"Mrs-Mrs-Mrs. Grey," came the sudden voice, making Genie jump and twirl around, hand over her heart. The hologram fizzled into view, the badly-rendered image staring at her in computerized displeasure. "Vlad has-has sent a mes-message. He will be-be late returning-ing tomorrow and will in-inform you of his progress-ess-ess at a later date." With that, the Maddie program vanished.

"Stupid computer," Genie gasped. Floating and invisible children she could handle, but that was just a heart attack waiting to happen. At sixty-one, she shouldn't have to deal with computers that could talk back… especially ones that seemed to develop a strong dislike for you and went out of its way to scare you.

"You no like Mommy?"

Genie looked down at the girl, who had stopped stirring and was staring at her critically. Licking her lips, Genie fought for something to say. Mr. Masters had told her that the four children thought the hologram was their mother and the old nanny didn't know if she should disrupt that thought. Finally she went with a vague answer. "She… startled me, Danielle."

"I no like Mommy either," Danielle pronounced, ignoring the nanny's answer. "It not really Mommy. Mommy in another city with brother."

Startled at the pronouncement, Genie blinked. "Where does your mother live?"

"I no know," the girl said softly. "I remember. I got big brother, named Daniel, and a real Mommy that picks things up." She looked into Genie's eyes, her blue eyes wide with sincerity. "Big brother _talk_, Genie. Why brother talk?"

"Most brothers can talk – I know mine can," Genie answered.

Danielle dropped to the ground, noodle-stirring job forgotten. "My brothers no talk. Why brothers no talk, Genie?"

Rolling her eyes to stare at the ceiling, Genie half-wished the girl had asked where babies come from. _That_ question had a tried and true answer. This answer was a bit trickier. She couldn't tell a four-year-old the truth about her brothers, and Genie didn't want to try to dumb it down for the girl. "I'm not sure, Danielle. Maybe they will, someday."

"Maybe," Danielle agreed quietly. Her blue eyes fixed on the older woman somberly for a moment, then the girl smiled and switched gears. "Lunch ready yet?"

Genie checked the noodles. "Almost. Five more minutes. Why don't you go track down your brothers and have them wash up?"

With a nod, the girl vanished and Genie sighed. Really, Danielle was just like her father – a mystery. Genie hoped that Mr. Masters knew what he was getting himself into with that young girl. A girl that smart was going to be dangerous as she got older. Already Genie could see the gears turning in Danielle's head.

Sooner or later, Danielle was going to figure out how to bite back when bitten.

* * *

_Family is not who you have or what they can do...  
it's the love that grows despite everything that can come between you._


	17. Blood

__

Thank you to Kinshita Kristanite, Jessica01, Rakahn, dizappearingirl, kdm13, Dannyphantomfreeek, Amazing Bluie, Thunderstorm101, Luiz4200, The GhostHybrid, Anne Camp aka Obi-Quiet, skitzofrenic, werewolf5, Oats-FFCC27, swordbunny4486, CatalystOfTheSoul, katiesparks, inukagome15, InvaderJohnny and TPcrazy for reviewing drabble 16!

* * *

**Family  
**A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria

* * *

_…this is the 100 drabble challenge of a connected variety that will go in an order that resembles chapters so this collection of singular one-shots will kind of look a lot like a full-fledged fiction…_

* * *

Drabble 17: Blood

* * *

Danielle stared down at her hands. Rocks were embedded into the skin, blood oozing and seeping out of dozens of tiny cuts. Really, her knees weren't in any better shape, but she didn't pay them any mind. It was the blood on her hands that brought the tears of pain and fear to her eyes.

The crimson-emerald blood dripped onto the ground around her, soaking into the leaves and the grass of this hidden corner in her father's back yard. She wanted to scream and cry and act like the four-year-old she was, but she knew better. Screaming got you nowhere. Tears got you nowhere.

Especially when there was no one around.

Her arms trembled as she tried to think through the agony that was ripping through her young mind. She was far from the mansion – she'd wandered off to play – and had fallen down an embankment. Tumbled, bruised, and hurt, she was alone.

"Daddy," she whispered, praying that he'd come to her rescue. He was brave, powerful, and warm when he held her. He was the smartest man she knew; he probably already knew that she was hurt and was flying in her direction to scoop her out of the dirt and carry her home.

The seconds that passed didn't dim her resolve. Another few drops of blood cascaded from her hands and she watched, painfully fascinated, as they splattered on her pants. Then she looked up and looked around. No father.

Her eyes narrowed, still scanning the trees over her head. She was still alone.

"Fine," she grumbled, her voice wobbling a little from the effort of holding back the tears that were threatening to flood down her cheeks. "I find him."

Stumbling to her feet, wincing as every step drew pain from her bloodied knees, she slowly started to make her way back up the hill she'd fallen down. Unable to use her hands, she clutched them softly to her chest and fought to keep her balance on the steep slope. After only a few steps – only a few feet up the crumbling hillside – she teetered for a moment and slid back down to the bottom, coming to rest on her back.

At that, she did break down into tears. She had no idea what to do next. Father _had_ to come to her rescue – he just had to. That's what fathers did.

When a head peeked over the edge of the embankment, staring down at his crying sister, Danielle didn't notice. It wasn't until the skeleton-like boy had made his way down and touched her shoulder that she opened her eyes and looked at him. Blue eyes met green. "Bones?" she whispered.

He grinned, stretching his skull-like face into his best parody of a smile. Grabbing Danielle's arm, he focused for a long second, then floated them both into the air long enough to set her back on her feet. _Come on_, he gestured, pointing up the hill.

Danielle wasn't convinced. She shook her head, holding her bloody hands close to her. "Can't."

He drifted towards the hill, holding out his hand. _I'll help_.

"Go get Daddy," Danielle pleaded softly. "I can't."

Bones just waited, hand out. Father wasn't coming, _wouldn't_ come, and they both knew it. Danielle just didn't want to give up on the dream that he would.

Finally, tears in her eyes, Danielle and her brother made their way slowly up the hill and back to the mansion where Genie, the nanny, cleaned her up.

* * *

_Family is not who you have or what they can do...  
it's the love that grows despite everything that can come between you._


	18. Rainbow

__

Thank you to Umbrae Calamitas, skitzofrenic, TPcrazy, Garnet Sky, werewolf5, inukagome15, Amazing Bluie, lilyoftheval5, Invader Johnny, Anne Camp aka Obi-Quiet, and Shining Zephyr for reviewing drabble 17!

* * *

**Family  
**A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria

* * *

_…this is the 100 drabble challenge of a connected variety that will go in an order that resembles chapters so this collection of singular one-shots will kind of look a lot like a full-fledged fiction…_

* * *

Drabble 18: Rainbow

* * *

Slinking close to the ground, Danielle snuck a little nearer to the object of her desire. She took a few steps, crouching behind a bush and gazing through the branches. Her knees ached from the spill she'd taken a few days earlier and her hands were still wrapped up in dirty bandages, but none of that bothered her.

There it was, fluttering in the soft breeze. So close, yet so far away.

She was going to be in so much trouble if her father ever figured out where she was. She had been told, in no uncertain terms, to never _ever_ leave her father's property. And where was she?

Bugging the neighbors, most definitely _not_ on her father's property, and about to steal something from their clothesline.

There was a little bit of a thrill to it, which made it half the fun. Her green eyes glittered, her four-year-old mind completely missing the fact that she could very well just go invisible and not be seen. Hiding behind the bush made her stomach clench in a way that was all too pleasant and she felt this strange thrill – kind of like when she tried to fly.

She peered through the bushes, brushing a lock of her white hair out of her eyes. The old lady that lived next door was nowhere to be seen. She'd hung out her laundry on the line and had vanished back into the house. The backyard was empty. It was time to make her move.

Danielle crept out from behind the bush, keeping low to the ground, her bright eyes looking around for any sign of the neighbor. Scuttling along the ground, she raced towards the clothesline, a small giggle of excitement bubbling out from between her lips. When she reached the poles, she glanced upwards, fixed on her target, and managed to fly just long enough to grab the object. A few tugs later, the clothespins slipped from the fabric and it was hers.

Gasping, wound-up giggles now unable to be suppressed, Danielle started to run the second her shoes hit the ground. She tore through the neighbor's yard with her stolen spoils tucked firmly against her. It wasn't until she was safely back on her father's property, hidden behind a tree, that she stopped her mad dash to look down at what she'd gotten.

She ran her fingers over the soft fabric. It was a thin cotton child's blanket, striped with every color of the rainbow. She traced the blue lines with her fingers, fascinated by the beautifully woven colors and the way that they sparkled in the molted sunshine under the tree.

"Pretty," she whispered, picking up a corner to rub the soft edge against her cheek. The blanket was obviously well-loved and well-used by someone in the neighbor's family, but Danielle didn't give the idea of returning it a second thought. She had plans for the beautiful rainbow blanket.

Carefully gathering it up so it wouldn't drag in the dirt, Danielle twisted back to her human form and started back towards the mansion. She stumbled a few times, once banging her already hurt knee, but determinedly kept from dropping her prize. It took quite a while to cross the expansive back yard.

Sneaking through the mansion, since she figured her father wouldn't be happy she'd been off his property, she slipped into her brothers' room. All three were playing with their own things. She grabbed a pair of scissors from the desk before she walked across the room and dropped down to sit next to her skeleton-like brother.

Bones watched curiously as Danielle carefully cut away parts of the wondrous blanket. When Danielle finally released her tongue from between her teeth and set the scissors down, she had a happy grin on her face. "Surprise!" she said with a smile.

_What_? Bones tipped his head to the side in an unasked question.

Standing up, Danielle draped the blanket over Bones's body, hiding the greenish bones from view. The only things visible under the blanket were his two glowing eyes, shining through the holes Danielle had cut. He'd been wrapping himself up in sheets lately, obviously bothered by his own appearance, and now he had something a little more permanent. She wrapped her arms around him tightly for a moment. "Thank you," she said, "for saving me from falling."

Bones blinked, but then returned the hug. _You're welcome_.

"Love you," Danielle whispered to her brother.

_Love you._

* * *

_Family is not who you have or what they can do...  
it's the love that grows despite everything that can come between you._


	19. Gray

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Darn, the email bot is down again, seems like. Slightly annoying, that. To MaxRideNut, since I can't answer through mail: This is a collection of oneshots or drabbles that have a single plot running through them. The drabbles are arranged in chronological order so it's more like a 'story', but it's really just a bunch of drabbles all centering around Vlad, Dani, and the clones. Kind of make sense?

Thank you to MaxRideNut, Nylah, CatalystOfTheSoul, werewolf5, lilyoftheval5, swordbunny4486, dizappearingirl, Invader Johnny, Anne Camp aka Obi-Quiet, skitzofrenic, and Amazing Blueie for reviewing drabble 18!

* * *

**Family  
**A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria

* * *

_…this is the 100 drabble challenge of a connected variety that will go in an order that resembles chapters so this collection of singular one-shots will kind of look a lot like a full-fledged fiction…_

* * *

Drabble 19: Gray

* * *

Vlad stared down at his food with a little bit of a sneer. He had to admit that the nanny… whatever her name was… was not only good with the clones, she was good at keeping secrets. She really had to be, or else she would have vanished some time ago. But her ability to make something that could be defined as a 'meal' was severely limited.

"Is this macaroni and cheese?" he asked sourly, poking at the cut-up pieces of hot dog in his bowl, but he got no response other than the happy sounds of the clones eating their suppers. "I am a Fortune 500 CEO. I am one of the richest men on the planet. I'm not going to eat macaroni and cheese."

Still no reply, but he wasn't really expecting one so he wasn't too surprised. The nanny wasn't present and the only one of the clones with the ability to speak had her mouth full. This was just quiet grumbling about the sorry state the world was in when Vlad Masters, billionaire, was fed boxed macaroni and cheese and hot dogs.

He set down his fork with a sigh, studying his 'children'. The three boys, all deformed in their own ways, were disappointing to look at. They were failures, no doubt, but their abilities were progressing on schedule. They would be useful, once he got them to understand what he needed them to do. Their training would need to start soon if they were going to be a challenge for Daniel later on.

The girl though… his daughter. Vlad glanced at her before looking away again. It was painful to look at her. The three boys were disappointments, no doubt, but Danielle made him feel something different. On days when he was being more-or-less honest with himself, he might have said that he felt _guilty_. Guilty for screwing up her creation. Guilty for creating her in the first place. Guilty for not loving her like a daughter. Guilty for loving her and not being willing to show it.

Guilty because, in her perfection, she still wasn't Daniel and he'd screwed up. She made him feel like a guilty failure, and Vlad hated that.

"So, how was your day?" he asked, trying to engage in small talk to drag his mind out the depressing track it had been stuck in. These were, for better or worse, his 'children'. They would be able to accomplish the tasks set before them.

The four clones look up as one, Danielle quickly swallowing her mouthful of macaroni before answering for the group. "Good."

Silence descended for a long few moments. "Well… what did you do?" Vlad tried to smile, watching as Danielle's face lit up in response.

"We play tag in the maze," she said with a happy grin, fiddling with her spoon distractedly. "Muscles find a…" she trailed off, her forehead wrinkling as she searched for the word their nanny had taught her. "A hive!" The grin was back, her blue eyes sparkling. "He find a hive of bugs."

Vlad glanced over at the clone in question, studying the boy's blank expression. Sure enough, Vlad could see a number of bee stings on the clone's face. "Did you kill the bees?"

Danielle blinked, startled. "Kill?" she asked.

"Yes," Vlad said exasperatedly. "Did you get rid of the bees?"

Slowly, she shook her head, confusion sparkling in her oh-so-intelligent eyes. Vlad felt a moment of that guilt flare up, but he ruthlessly squashed it as she said, "Why kill bees?"

"They're dangerous. They might sting someone and then I'd have to deal with it."

"They pretty," Danielle said after a moment of thought. The three brothers had gone back to eating, but Danielle's blue eyes were fixed on Vlad's. "They sound nice."

Vlad shook his head. "After supper we're going to go get rid of them." There was a sound of finality in his voice as he made his decision. The four clones would get some practice with their ghost powers learning to eradicate the annoying insects.

Tears swam in Danielle's eyes for a moment, but she lowered her head before Vlad could catch more than a glimpse of them. Placing her spoon on the table next to her half-uneaten bowl of macaroni, she put her hands in her lap and seemed to be studying the tablecloth, unable to look up.

The guilt welled again as Vlad considered, just for a split second, to take care of the bees on his own… or maybe even to let the things stay for a few days if she thought they were so pretty. But his eyes hardened and he glared down at the his own offending bowl of macaroni and cheese. No, the clones would learn to follow his directions without question. There could be no softening, no wavering.

The bees would be destroyed, tears or not.

And after that, it was a gray supper indeed.

* * *

_Family is not who you have or what they can do...  
it's the love that grows despite everything that can come between you._


	20. Fortitude

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_Shining-Zephyr is total awesomeness with the spin-off drabble "Days of Our Lives". Go read it and send her praise!_

Thank you to TexasDreamer01, kdm13, anonymous 666, Luiz4200, dizappearingirl, katiesparks, MaxRideNut, Amazing Bluie, werewolf5, Garnet Sky, skitzo being lazy, Anne Camp aka Obi-quiet, Jessica01, inukagome15, TPcrazy, Amethyst Asheryn, CatalystOfTheSoul, and Invader Johnny for reviewing drabble 19!

* * *

**Family  
**A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria

* * *

_…this is the 100 drabble challenge of a connected variety that will go in an order that resembles chapters so this collection of singular one-shots will kind of look a lot like a full-fledged fiction…_

* * *

Drabble 20: Fortitude

* * *

"Higher," Vlad ordered sternly, watching the young girl float into the air. Her eyes were squished shut and her fists clenched in concentration. "You can do better than this."

She gasped a little, then pushed herself a few feet higher into the clear morning air. Body shaking slightly with the effort she was expending, Danielle let her eyes flicker open long enough to look at how far off the ground she was. At almost five months old and a bit over three feet tall, she was easily three times her height off the grass.

And not entirely pleased with it.

Her stomach gave a sudden lurch at being up in the air and she tumbled back to the ground, landing painfully on the soft grass at her father's feet. For a moment she lay still, but then she got to her feet and glanced up at her father. "Sorry," she said, rubbing her arm. She knew that her father wanted her to get higher in the air, not fall to the ground.

Vlad tapped his foot for a moment as he stared into his daughter's glowing eyes. "Try again," he said simply.

She fought to hold back a groan, instead levitating herself off the ground until she was nearly eye-level. This amount of 'flying' wasn't very difficult – she'd been practicing going up and down and holding her position when she was in the air – but anything much more than this strained her ability. Taking a deep breath, she pressed against the ground with her mind, feeling her body rise slowly into the air in response.

Her target was dangling from a tree branch and when she reached for it, it fluttered just beyond her outstretched fingers. Red and glittering in the morning sunshine, the fabric flag refused to be grabbed by her small hand.

"Higher, Danielle," her father said.

A few inches higher and Danielle's mind burst into pain. Two fingers captured hold of the soft fabric just before she lost control of her levitation and she collapsed to the ground, head pounding in agony. But instead of feeling the hard ground break her fall as she'd expected, she felt two arms catch her after only dropping a few feet. When she opened her eyes, her father was looking down at her with an arched eyebrow.

With a small smile, her sudden headache making the world spin and glow a little, she held up her hand, the flag held firmly between in her grasp. "Got it."

"Yes, yes you did," he answered, a tiny grin answering her smile. "I'm proud of you."

The universe seemed to come to a halt for the young girl as she stared at her father in disbelief. He was _proud_ of her? He'd never said those words before and Danielle wasn't entirely sure what was going to happen next. When his strong arms set her down on the ground, the world cart wheeled dizzily for a moment and her knees wobbled. Blinking through her tiredness, she held out the flag to her father, suddenly and strangely feeling shy around the larger man. "Again?" she asked softly.

Vlad took the flag, but shook his head. "You did better than I expected, Danielle. Go play."

She grinned at him, then raced off the through grass. Her chest burned, her legs ached, and her head was screaming from how much energy she'd used up training with her father, but her spirits were so high that she couldn't do anything _but_ run. He was _proud_ of her.

* * *

_Family is not who you have or what they can do...  
it's the love that grows despite everything that can come between you._


	21. Vacation

__

Thank you to Thunderstorm101, CatalystOfTheSoul, skitzofrenic, Amazing Bluie, Luiz4200, werewolf5, kdm13, Nylah, dizappearingirl, Danni Lea, swordbunny4486, inukagome15, Anne Camp aka Obi-quiet, Invader Johnny, and Shining Zephyr for reviewing drabble 20!

* * *

**Family  
**A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria

* * *

_…this is the 100 drabble challenge of a connected variety that will go in an order that resembles chapters so this collection of singular one-shots will kind of look a lot like a full-fledged fiction…_

* * *

Drabble 21: Vacation

* * *

Danielle glared at the calendar her mother was pointing to. "I _know_," she said with an annoyed scowl – one which, had Genie the nanny been around to see it, would have thought looked scarily like her father's. She probably would have followed up the thought with another that went along the lines of 'such an expression should not be on the face of a five-year-old girl'. "Daddy's gone. When's he coming back?"

"T-two days, Dan-Danielle," the program stuttered.

"It's not _Dan-Danielle_!" the girl complained, a bit louder than actually necessary. "It's _Danielle._"

The Maddie program, unable to compute a response to the girl's sentence, simply logged the incident for Vlad's perusal later and turned off the hologram without a further word.

Danielle stared at the spot the facsimile of her mother at been for a few seconds longer before storming out of the room. Over the past few weeks, she'd been getting slowly fed up with the annoying Maddie program. Of the four clones, she was the only one to realize that the person she talked to was _not_, in fact, her mother.

Her _real_ mother was in some other town quite a distance away.

Skulking up to the clones' playroom, Danielle completely ignored the quizzical looks from her brothers and dropped heavily into a chair, arms crossed, her expression one that would have frightened storm clouds away. For a few moments, everything was quiet. Then she huffed loudly, making a big show of how angry she was at the world.

One of her brothers finally took the hint. Covered up in a rainbow-colored blanket, Bones drifted over towards her and tapped her on the shoulder, tipping his head to the side in an unasked question. _What's wrong?_

"Daddy's gone again," she muttered darkly. "And he didn't take us with him."

Bones glanced back at his brothers, then shrugged. He didn't really _want_ to go with their father on one of his trips. The clones knew just enough about their father's job to realize that it was boring.

"I want to go see Mommy," she whispered softly, the tension leaking out of her shoulders. "I want to go see our _real_ Mommy." When she looked up at Bones, her normally blue eyes were sparkling with emerald fireflies. She wanted to crawl into her mother's arms and have her mother call her by the right name and have someone hug her and hold her close.

Confused, Bones just tipped his head to the other side, watching his sister for a few moments. He had no idea what she was talking about – their mother would show up if anything happened, there was no reason to _go_ anywhere. But she was obviously upset and he'd go along with it; maybe this was some new kind of game. Tapping his finger joints together to get her attention, he gestured with his hands. _How?_

She thought about it for almost a minute before jumping out of her chair to grab the backpack Genie had forgotten to put away after their last picnic. "I'm going on a trip," she said as she grabbed things to stuff inside. A small blanket, one of the toy cups, a pad of drawing paper and some of the color crayons quickly joined the picnic supplies still left inside. "I'm going to find Mommy."

Bones rolled his eyes in his head, looking to where his brothers had already gone back to playing. The two of them didn't quite understand what their sister was planning, so Bones just sighed silently and turned back to where his sister was zipping up her backpack. _Where are you going?_ he said with his hands.

Being clones, Danielle easily understood what her brother was saying, even though the rest of the world probably would have had a tough time with it. She hesitated, straightening. "Um…" she murmured, knowing that her brother had asked a really good question. Her eyes suddenly lit up. "Mommy!" she called out, waiting for the Maddie program to fizzle into view.

"Y-yes, Dan-Danielle?"

Danielle put on her best smile – the one that never failed to get her a cookie from Genie - and tried to ignore the stutter. One of the few things she knew about her real mother was her first name... hopefully that would be enough. "Where's Maddie?"

The Maddie program blinked at the young clone, but didn't feel any surprise at the odd question. It was, in fact, a question Vlad asked all the time. Vlad had long since placed a tracking program on the woman in question and it didn't take more than a few moments for the program to access her current location. "Amity Park."

Danielle grinned, turning to her brother. "I'm going to Amity Park," she said proudly, pleased with herself.

"You are-are not allowed-ed to leave th-the grounds, Dan-Danielle," the program stuttered happily.

Tilting her chin back slightly, Danielle started at the bad copy of her real mother. "Make me," she said shortly, turned, and walked towards the door.

All three brothers watched her go. Only Bones understood what his sister was planning and had an inkling of how much trouble she'd be in when their father returned. He shook his head sagely, but he didn't make a move to stop her. Instead, after the door swung shut, he glanced up at their mother and then went over to play with his brothers.

The Maddie program waited for a moment as it tried to work on what to do in this situation. Finally, it sent a text message to Vlad and shut off the holoemitters in the playroom, leaving the brothers to play in peace, not caring that Vlad wouldn't respond to the message.

When Genie the nanny appeared with lunch an hour later, Danielle was long gone. When she asked where Danielle was, all three brothers merely shrugged their shoulders, having already forgotten that their sister was officially on vacation.

* * *

_Family is not who you have or what they can do...  
it's the love that grows despite everything that can come between you._


	22. Mother Nature

__

Two drabbles today!

Thank you to Danni Lea, CatalystOfTheSoul, Invader Johnny, and Shining Zephyr for reviewing drabble 21 before I could get this one up!

* * *

**Family  
**A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria

* * *

_…this is the 100 drabble challenge of a connected variety that will go in an order that resembles chapters so this collection of singular one-shots will kind of look a lot like a full-fledged fiction…_

* * *

Drabble 22: Mother Nature

* * *

Danielle was on vacation and loving every minute of it. She tramped through the late autumn leaves, grinning up into the bare branches of the trees overhead and listening to the birds singing away the last few days before winter. Hours before, she'd stormed out of her father's house and off down the road. Now, alone, she'd left the road and was striding out through the woods, confident in her five-year-old ability to survive anything that life could throw at her.

Of course, now that the sun was setting and her stomach was rumbling painfully, Danielle's smile was a bit forced as she watched the drooping sun. "Amity Park," she whispered fiercely, keeping her feet moving. She knew that if she could only keep her mind on where she wanted to be, she'd get there before it got too dark.

She'd be able to snuggle into her _real_ mother's warm arms and drift off to sleep.

A small, pleased smile drifted onto her face, her feet picking on their pace slightly at the happy image. Her mother would make her a warm meal, wrap her in a blanket, and tell her a story – just like the mothers did in the stories Genie read to her. Her mother would love her and care for her and, when her father showed up, they'd be an actual family.

Cresting a hill, she steadied herself against a tree and scanned the area below her, confident that she would finally see Amity Park. Surely she had walked far enough to have gone all the way around the world by now! But… all that she could see was trees.

Trees, trees, and more trees.

She glanced back over her shoulder, her sharp blue eyes piercing into the growing shadows of the forest that lay behind her, and for the first time felt a moment of panic. There was no Amity Park anywhere. There was no home to be seen.

There were only trees…

She shivered suddenly, pulling her arms close to her. Where was everyone? She'd been walking for _hours_ – why was she still surrounded by trees? What was she going to do when it got dark?

"Daddy?" she called out softly. She didn't want to be out in the trees in the dark. Genie had just read her a book about the wild things that lived in the forest; Danielle felt no desire to meet any of them after the sun had set. Maybe it was just time to go home.

Turning around, she started to make her way back the way she had come, but she quickly lost track of which direction she'd come from. Stumbling to a stop, she looked around, straining for something that looked familiar. When nothing met her gaze but unfamiliar trees and dark bushes, she knew: she was lost.

"Daddy!" she screamed. She didn't know how far away her father was, but surely he'd be able to hear her. She was his daughter – he _had _to come and rescue her. "I don't want to be lost," she whispered. "I want to go home."

As the sun dropped the rest of the way out of the sky, the shadows creeping out of their hiding holes to envelope the forest, Danielle stood still, occasionally calling out for a father who was too far away to hear her. "Please Daddy," she whispered at one point, watching the stars bloom overhead, the temperature plummeting, her breath starting to fog in the air. "Please…"

Her pleas were to no avail. Shivering almost uncontrollably, she finally yanked out the thin blanket she'd packed into her backpack and wrapped it around her shoulders, staring out into the darkness. The shadows had grown thick and black, hiding anything that might be creeping around beyond the trees.

Stomach complaining loudly, arms and legs aching from the cold, Danielle dropped down at the base of one of the trees, her back pressed firmly against the bark, her sapphire eyes gazing fearfully out into the darkness, pack clenched tightly in her hands. Her mind was busily providing her with images of the things that could be stalking their way towards her. Breath hitching in her throat as her imagination ran away with her, her body reacted to her terror instinctively by twisting her into her ghost form without another thought.

Almost instantly, the chill vanished, her body equalizing with the air temperature. Her glittering eyes picked through the shadows much further than her human eyes could, showing her the stark silhouettes of the trees all around her. Her terror vanished slightly, toned down by the immortal, powerful thrum of her ghost form. Slowly, ever so slowly, she relaxed her death grip on her backpack, but her eyes kept flitting around the trees, searching for monsters, ready to jump up and run at a moment's notice.

"Daddy?" she called out, her hollow voice echoing eerily through the trees, the slight glow of her body illuminating the area around her. But there was still no answer. Wrapping her arms around her backpack, her blanket still held tightly around her shoulders, she waited, wishing with all of her might for someone to rescue her. "Genie? Mommy?"

Her mother had never failed to show up when called before and, even though Danielle knew that the Maddie program wasn't her real mother, the fact that the stuttering hologram didn't instantly fizzle into view stabbed through her heart and brought tears to her eyes. Tears started to trickle down her cheeks.

She was completely alone. Nobody was going to show up to rescue her. A sob wrenched its way out of her throat, tears cascading down her face as she buried her head in her backpack. She was scared and hungry and alone and completely lost in the dark. She didn't know what to do.

A sound in the woods brought her up short, her breath stopping dead in her chest, her eyes wide as she scanned the trees. For a moment, everything was still. Then the sound came again, this time accompanied by movement far off in the trees.

"Daddy?" she whispered.

The creature she'd seen froze, twisting its head to stare at her. The soft glow of her skin reflected in its mirror-like eyes for a few moments. Then it turned and started to stalk towards her, twin starving eyes focused on the young girl's terrified face.

* * *

_Family is not who you have or what they can do...  
it's the love that grows despite everything that can come between you._


	23. Cat

**Family  
**A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria

* * *

_…this is the 100 drabble challenge of a connected variety that will go in an order that resembles chapters so this collection of singular one-shots will kind of look a lot like a full-fledged fiction…_

_

* * *

_Drabble 23: Cat

* * *

Danielle's fingers clenched tightly around the backpack, staring in the mirror-like eyes of the creature slowly pacing towards her. Her five-year-old mind raced around in circles, making the monster larger and scarier and more powerful than any natural creature could possibly be. "Daddy!" she screamed, turned, and ran.

The creature followed her. Danielle glanced back, imagining huge claws and large teeth and a monster that would snatch her up and yell 'rawr!'. Those two shining eyes continued to stare at her through the darkness.

"Dad-" Her voice cut off as her foot caught in a tree root and she slammed into the ground hard enough to knock the wind from her lungs. Tears jumped to her glowing eyes and she struggled back to her hands and knees.

The monster paced slowly out of the shadows and into the moonlight. Silvery light shone against matted hair, triangular ears, and long tail. It moved to within a few feet of the terrified half-ghost girl and sniffed her curiously.

"A cat?" Danielle whispered. Leaning back onto her heels, one hand reached up to scrub at the tears on her cheek. "What you doing out here, cat?"

The cat made an odd mrowing sound and inched closer, edging towards a backpack that smelled like sandwiches.

Hesitantly, Danielle stretched out a hand and lightly touched the top of the cat's head. The small feline froze, its ears pressing flat against its skull. Danielle, who had never had any experience with pets beyond the pictures in her books, didn't understand the gesture. She pressed a bit harder, running her fingers down the cat's stiffening spine.

"Pretty-" Suddenly the cat hissed and lashed out with its claws, catching her fingers. Danielle yelped and yanked her hand away from the ratty cat, pulling it against her chest and staring at the cat with wide, green eyes. "Cat?"

She gazed down at the cat for a long moment, watching it slowly arch its back and flick its high-held tail. Her eyes flickered down to study the small drops of blood forming on her fingers.

Perfectly silent, the cat turned and sauntered out of the clearing, quickly vanishing into the shadows. Danielle continued to sit in the clearing, staring at the stop where the cat had vanished. "Cat?"

For a few seconds, Danielle was happy that the creature was gone. It hadn't wanted to be touched and petted – it had hurt her, after all – perhaps it was better that it left. But then the night started to press down on the young girl again. The shadows stretched towards her, the trees leaned closer, and the wind whispered through the leaves.

Danielle shivered and looked up with a face that was rapidly filling with fear. "Cat?" she called out, wishing for the company of an evil cat over no company at all. "Where you go?"

The cat didn't answer.

Getting to her feet, Danielle stumbled in the direction the ragged animal had gone. She walked faster and faster, almost breaking into a run at one point, until she saw the tell-tale mirror-like glow of the cat's eyes. "There you are, cat."

The cat blinked at her before turning and continuing on its way. Danielle followed, pushing branches out of the way and feeling bushes catch at her clothes. The small, slight animal wasn't choosing the easy way through the trees, but Danielle was determined to trail it.

Her feet hurt. Her legs burned. She was tired and quickly getting frustrated with the seemingly endless walk through the woods. Having long-since forgotten the reason for her trek into the woods, she wanted nothing more than to make it back home again.

"Daddy?" she whimpered. The cat turned to look at her then slipped suddenly past a particularly crowded section of trees. Danielle took a few quick steps forwards and pressed her hands against the tree trunks. A flip of a tail met her eyes. "Cat! Wait up!"

She looked for a way around the trees, the idea of being left alone clawing at her mind, before she remembered she could phase through the trees. Only moments later, she was standing on the other side of the thick copse, but the cat was nowhere to be seen. "Cat!"

A glimmer through the trees had her moving in that direction, feeling a small smile on her face when the warm light of a house's windows met her eyes. "Cat?" Turning around, she looked around for the animal that had led her here. When nothing met her eyes, Danielle returned her attention to the neighbor's home.

Her stomach rumbled and she couldn't help wondering if this house had food.

* * *

_Family is not who you have or what they can do...  
it's the love that grows despite everything that can come between you._


	24. No Time

_I NEVER leave a story for dead. Sometimes it may seem so… but never. :) This one… I'm trying to revive a desire to work on it. One drabble every morning before heading to work is my half-baked plan. xD We'll see if it works._

_Thanks to Nylah, naquam-tenshi, Shay Durrow, Anne Camp aka Obi-quiet, Invader Johnny, and kdm13 for the reviews._

_

* * *

_**Family  
**A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria

* * *

_…this is the 100 drabble challenge of a connected variety that will go in an order that resembles chapters so this collection of singular one-shots will kind of look a lot like a full-fledged fiction…_

_

* * *

_Drabble 24: No Time

* * *

Five months old was a bit too young to be sneaking and thieving in most parts of the world – especially in rural Washington – but five was just the perfect age for Danielle. She couldn't imagine being anything else.

It was completely dark in the house as she phased through the door and into the small kitchen. She stood still, letting her eyes adjust to the slightly darker environment, and was amazed by what she saw. The room was well less than half the size of her father's kitchen, and was worn and used and dirty. Surely this wasn't this house's only kitchen? Where was the rest of it?

She looked around, contemplating exploring the rest of the house to find the rest of the kitchen, but her stomach reminded her of why she was sneaking. Creeping up to one of the cabinets, she started to search for something to eat.

Things scurried around when she opened doors, making Danielle pause, but she carefully studied the contents of each cabinet anyways. She didn't have any idea what the scurrying things might be – although they looked like some kind of bug – so she pushed them from her mind. "Where food?"

Cabinet after cabinet, drawer and drawer, and still nothing was meeting her eyes. She huffed angrily and crossed her arms, staring at the last cabinet. "There better be food," she warned, sending the door a look that would have sent most living things running, and stalked up to it. Yanking it open she looked in expectantly… and found a stash of pots and pans.

It was only the half-thought that she was sneaking that kept her from slamming the door closed in frustration. She glared at the door, then turned around and surveyed the small kitchen. She'd opened every drawer and every cabinet. Where were they hiding the food? Her father kept most of his food in cabinets. Didn't these people have to eat?

Finally her eyes caught on the refrigerator and a half-memory of the old woman getting her a juice box surfaced in her mind. "Food?" she whispered as she walked softly across the kitchen and grabbed onto the handle.

It took far more effort then she'd expected to yank open the refrigerator, but when the light blossomed and she was able to see the contents, her heart leapt. It was filled with food from top to bottom. "Yes!"

Grabbing a few things that looked edible, she settled down onto the floor of the kitchen and worked her way through her supper. One package was opened to reveal some white, soft substance that tasted good, but ended up being more fun to make pictures with on the floor. A small square container ended up being a slice of cake, which Danielle enjoyed, and cold spaghetti filled her last container.

Fingers and face smeared with white whipped cream, chocolate, and spaghetti sauce, and her stomach finally full, Danielle pushed herself to her feet and yawned. It was late – well past her bedtime – but she wasn't home yet and she wasn't sure sleeping in someone else's home was allowed.

Leaving the mess on the floor, she phased back through the back door and sat on the back steps of the small house. "Daddy?" she breathed, looking around. "Where you?"

The night was pressing down on her, but with a full belly and the safety of a house looming behind her, the darkness was doing more to lull her to sleep than scare her anymore. Now would be the perfect time for her father to arrive, scoop her off this strange deck, and settle her into a warm bed.

She yawned again, her rapidly blinking eyes finally noticing the clotheslines in the backyard, and suddenly the entire place looked familiar. She sat up a little straighter, struggling to remember where she might have seen this place before. "Oh!" A small smile appeared on her face as the memory clicked. This was where she stole the blanket for Bones!

"Home!" she laughed happily. It was just over that bridge, through the trees on that hill, and she'd be able to see her house.

She was on her feet and moving without any more thought. Over the river and through the woods, she was home in no time.

Stumbling into her own home, Danielle could barely keep her eyes open. She picked the nearest soft-looking thing – a small couch – and curled up. It took only moments for her to fall asleep.

The old woman Vlad had hired to watch the clones found her hours later, confused and surprised to see the girl covered in whipped cream and asleep in the foyer. Shaking her head at the oddness of young children, she scooped up Danielle and gave her a bath, all without the exhausted Danielle ever opening her eyes.

By the time Vlad walked through the door the next morning, Danielle was clean and safely in her bed. And later, when Genie heard stories about a break-in down the road and the chocolate and spaghetti fingerprints left behind, she never said a word.

* * *

_Family is not who you have or what they can do...  
it's the love that grows despite everything that can come between you._


	25. Trouble Lurking

_Thanks to Nylah, naquam-tenshi, Shay Durrow, Anne Camp aka Obi-quiet, Invader Johnny, Nano Phantom, Echoheart, Amazing Bluie, and Luiz4200 for the reviews._

_

* * *

_**Family  
**A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria

* * *

_…this is the 100 drabble challenge of a connected variety that will go in an order that resembles chapters so this collection of singular one-shots will kind of look a lot like a full-fledged fiction…_

_

* * *

_Drabble 25: Trouble Lurking

* * *

Danielle Masters peeked out from behind a bush, her blue eyes wide as she watched the huge truck backing up to the building. The strange beeps and gushes of air and creaking of tires had her fascinated. She'd never seen anything so big _move_ before. Her bedroom could probably fit inside that truck!

Her father stepped out of the building and walked across the lawn, forcing Danielle to shrink farther down into her hiding spot. Her brothers had gotten a furious lecture this morning about remaining unseen – she hadn't, due to the fact that Genie had been trying to teach her to read at the time – but she was smart enough to realize the lecture had been for her as well. Being outside wouldn't make her father happy.

"Don't run over my flowers," her father growled, his arms crossing and glaring at the truck slowly making its way off the pavement and across the grass. "They are worth more than you'll make in your lives."

When the truck moved enough to hide her father from view, Danielle risked sitting up and getting a better view of the happenings. Men were walking beside the truck, clearly directing its movements. At one point, the truck hid the entire _house _from view. "Wow," she whispered.

With a huge hiss of air, the truck came to a stop. "Open the back," her father demanded, appearing from around the back of the trailer. "I want to check it to make sure you idiots didn't damage it during transit."

"We took the best of care, sir-" one of the men said, jumping from cab.

"And yet I'm check it anyway," Vlad said, overriding the man's words. "Open it."

Danielle flinched when the men shot each other glances and rolled their eyes. Nobody rolled their eyes at Vlad Masters! She knew from experience what kind of punishment that earned.

She watched, confused, as Vlad ignored the men. Why wasn't he punishing them? But the bewilderment vanished when the huge trailer doors opened and she caught a glimpse of the inside, her mouth dropping open in astonishment. It was a cavernous space full of boxes and crates, forcing Danielle to instantly revise her earlier thought: not one but _two_ of her bedrooms could fit inside of that truck!

"Where is it?" Vlad ordered.

"That big one," one of the men said, looking at a clipboard. "You want us to open it?"

"Of course," her father snapped. "You won't be able to move it inside that stupid crate anyways."

People vanished into the shadows of the trailer, reappearing on top of a crate taller than they were. They crawled around for a few minutes, pulling at things and twisting things and yanking on things. Danielle squinted, trying to see better, but she was simply too far away to see well.

Her eyes slipped over to her father, who was clearly preoccupied with what was going on, then towards the men trying to open the wooden box. The faintest thought of how much trouble she was going to get into if she was caught crossed her mind – a thought that was completely drowned in her curiosity about what was in the box.

A breath slipped out of her mouth as she turned invisible and, crouching and slinking from bush to bush, she made her way closer and closer to the truck. With every step, the truck loomed higher to the slight five-year-old.

When she got into a better position much closer to the truck, an unconscious smile crept onto face. Nobody had seen her. She'd done it!

_Crash!_

"You idiots! If you broke it you'll be buying me a new one!"

The loud sound and her father's furious yells caught Danielle's attention and she peered around her new hiding bush. The front of the crate had fallen to the floor, one of the men sitting next to it looking dazed, a bit of blood on his face.

"Get that fool out of here," Vlad snarled.

She watched the hurt man for a second, feeling a small bit of fear that he was seriously hurt, but her focus was dragged to the contents of the crate. Whatever was inside glittered of metal and glass, shining buttons and computer screens.

"Get me a light."

"Yes, sir," one of the men said, hitting some sort of switch and the inside of the trailer blossomed with light.

Danielle's heart stuttered at the sight. A glass tube took up most of the device, tubes and computers and wires circling around it like some sort of crazy octopus. She could see the grin that was growing on her father's face and the looks of confusion on the moving men when they caught a glimpse of their precious cargo. But she wasn't confused; she knew exactly what it was.

She'd seen the pictures of it before, in her father's lab.

Vlad Masters was about to make her another brother.

* * *

_Family is not who you have or what they can do...  
it's the love that grows despite everything that can come between you._


End file.
